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FIRST PRINCIPLES 



POPULAR EDUCATION 



PUBLIC INSTRUCTION. 



By S. S. RANDALL, 

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF THE CITY 
OF NEW YORK. 




/ NE W YORK: ^ 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
1868. 



-til 5 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
District of New York. 



) 



TO THE 

Hon. henry BARNARD, LL.D., 

COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 

This Little Volume is respectfully inscribed, as a humble contribution 

to that great cause in which we have both been so long 

co-laborers, and to which the best energies 

of our lives have been devoted. 



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in 2011 witin funding from 
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littp://www.archive.org/details/firstprinciplesoOOrand 




TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Introductory 7 

CHAPTER I. 
PiiiLOSoniY OF Education 9 

CHAPTER n. 
The Family 18 

CHAPTER III. 
Public Instruction 28 

CHAPTER IV. 
The School — Elementary Instruction 42 

CHAPTER V. 
Intellectual Culture 50 

CHAPTER VI. 
Systems op Instruction G3 

CHAPTER Vn. 
Methods of Intellectual Culture 72 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Moral and Religious Instruction 93 

CHAPTER IX. 
Practical Education 112 



6 Contents. 



CHAPTER X. 
Female Education , 125 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Teacher — His Chakacter and Duty— Mental and Moral 

Development 140 

CHAPTER XII. 
Supervision and Inspection 163 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Systems of Public Instruction — Their Errors and Defects... 171 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Science and Revelation — Sanctions and Motives — Public 

Opinion 200 

CHAPTER XY. 
Objects, Means and Ends of Education 226 




INTR on UCTOR Y. 



If there be one subject which, more than any other, may- 
be regarded as of paramount importance to the permanent 
well-being of a country like ours, it is that of the education 
of its successive generations of citizens. It has been well 
said that " Intelligence is the life of Liberty." In a gov- 
ernment where the masses of the people possess or control 
all the functions and powers which are elsewhere conferred 
upon hereditary sovereigns, it is essential, not only to its 
own stability and welfare, but to the highest and most 
cherished interests of every individual comprising the com- 
munity, that these high powers should be delegated to and 
exercised only by the enlightened, the wise and the good. 

The following pages are offered to the public as the con- 
clusions upon the several subjects discussed, resulting fivom 
an experience of nearly thirty years in the practical ad- 
ministration of the systems of Public Instruction in the 
City and State of New York. During the first half of the 
period, as fellow-laborer with Horace Ma^^-n and Heney 
Baen^aed, and sitting at the feet of such men as John A. 
Dix, JoHN^ C. Spencee, Samuel Young and Cheistophee 
MoEGAN in the State Department, the author could scarce- 
ly fail of imbibing the great central truths pertaining to 
Popular Education and the fundamental principles upon 
which it should rest. Fourteen years of unremitting labor 



8 Introductory, 



as Superintendent of the Public Schools of the City of 
ISTew York have not only served to deepen and strengthen 
the principles thus acquired', but have suggested many 
methods of carrying them into successful execution, which 
could be clearly developed only under such auspices as this 
great metropolis has afforded. 

It is of course quite impracticable in a work of this 
size to enter into the internal and external details of Public 
School instruction. I have merely endeavored to point out 
the foundations and elementary principles which I conceive 
to be essential to every well-regulated system of Education, 
and upon which durable and useful superstructures may be 
erected ; illustrating those principles with so much of de- 
tail, only, as in my judgment seemed essential to the suc- 
cessful and harmonious operation of these systems through-' 
out the length and breadth of our land. 

At the time this work was commenced, the principle of 
Universal andFEEE Education was recognized and prac- 
tically carried out only in the City of N'ew York and scat- 
tered portions of a few of the States of the Union. Now 
that it has become the watch-word of progress throughout 
the Republic and in the most enlightened portions of 
Europe, I flatter myself that any word of encouragement 
and counsel from one of the humblest pioneers in this great 
work of the age, may not be altogether unacceptable to 
those who, by their energy, perseverance and intelligence, 
have planted the flag of " Feee Schools " upon the institu- 
tions of our National and State governments. 



FIRST PRINCIPLES OF POPULAR 
EDUCATION, 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATIOl^. 

EDUCATIOl^ has been properly defined as tlie 
development, direction, and culture of the hu- 
man mind. In its most comprehensive import, it 
includes the aggregate of all the varied influences 
brought to bear upon the mind from every 
source, external or internal, from the cradle to 
the grave. In a more restricted sense it may be 
said to consist in that elementary training of the 
various powei^, faculties, and affections of our na- 
ture, which shall most effectually fit us for the 
discharge of all the duties of human life, and en- 
able us adequately to appreciate and faithfully to 
improve our highest moral and religious nature. 
The true philosophy of education is therefore to 

A2 



lo First Principles of Popular Education, 

"be sought in a careful investigation of our mental 
and moral faculties, tlieir original destination, the 
objects and proper ends and aims of our being, 
and the means by which we may best attain 
these objects, and accomplish these ends and 
aims. 

It must be obvious to the most superficial 
thinker, that no system of education can be of 
any validity, which omits to take into the account, 
as a primary and indispensable element, the dis- 
tinctive nature and character of the being to be 
educated, and the circumstances, both physical 
and moral, by which he is surrounded. Man is 
an immortal being, endowed by his Creator with 
all those faculties, as well of mind as of body, 
which, properly appreciated and faithfully used, 
were designed to contribute, in the highest possi- 
ble degree, to his happiness and well-being here 
and hereafter. It may not, indeed, be in his pow- 
er at all times effectually to defend himself from 
the perpetual incursions of evil in its manifold 
and myriad shapes: to guard against the innu- 
merable assaults of physical pain to which he is 
constantly exposed; to avert the approaches of 
sickness, disease, and death ; or to protect himself 
aofainst the formidable tide of vice and wicked- 
ness which unceasingly rolls up its waves at his 



Tke Philosophy of Education, 1 1 

feet. By tlie constitution of Ms physical nature, 
lie is subjected to pain as well as rendered sus- 
ceptible of pleasure : suffering, no less tlian enjoy- 
ment, is an indispensable portion of his inherit- 
ance, and death and the grave, sooner or later, 
must ^^have dominion over him;" but he has 
that within which can enable him to triumph 
over all the ills of mortality, to convert every 
affliction into a blessing, to welcome pain and 
death itself as the harbingers of a new and ever- 
lasting life, " where there shall be no more death, 
neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be 
any more pain." In like manner, by the constitu- 
tion of his moral nature, evil in some of its multi- 
farious developments must enter as an essential 
ingredient into his experience, in a world fallen 
as is ours from its original sinlessness and purity. 
Vice and wickedness everywhere abound ; and 
no moral or religious atmosphere is so pure as to 
be wholly free from the pestilential taint of the 
prevailing plague. But here too " they that are 
for us are more than they that are against us." 
We are furnished from the Divine Armory with 
weapons amply adequate to our protection and 
defense ; and are infallibly assured that our 
temptations and trials, however many and bitter, 
shall never exceed our strength or our powers of 



1 2 First Principles of Popular Educatio7t, 

resistance or endurance ; that all tlie evils of life, 
all its struggles and conflicts, its alternations of 
victory and defeat, shall " v^ork together for 
good," provided only we are true to ourselves, 
and forget not, amid all our varied experience of 
human ill, the undying soul and Him from whom 
it emanates and to whom it shall ascend. 

Upon the broad foundations, therefore, of an 
assured conviction of the immortality of our exist- 
ence as sentient and intelligent beings, and of the 
truth of that Christian Kevelation which has shed 
its clear and benignant light upon our path, must 
we construct the work of education, if we would 
take account of all the elements which underlie 
the foundation of character. Without entering 
upon any of those controverted grounds which 
have originated and perpetuated distinctive views 
on the part of numerous sects, all agreeing in the 
fundamental principles and great leading doc- 
trines of Christianity, we must plant ourselves at 
once upon those principles and doctrines con- 
ceded by all, of every denomination and every 
sect, who worship and acknowledge one common 
Creator and Redeemer, and reverently look up to 
him for guidance and direction in this life, and 
an immortality of existence in that which is to 
come, where each shall reap there as he has sown 



The Philosophy of Education. 1 3 

here. Far other and different will be the work 
of education for a being so circumstanced from 
that which might well suffice in view of a faith 
less comprehensive and sublime. If our destiny 
were restricted to the utmost boundary of our 
mortal existence, and none of our thoughts or 
actions, our designs or pursuits, could reach be- 
yond the transitory effects of this present life, 
many of the noblest and deepest lessons of in- 
struction and wisdom which the Christian pupil 
must early imbibe and assiduously cherish and 
obey, would be needless and useless. The ends 
at which the Christian teacher aims, the motives 
by which the expanding minds committed to his 
charge must be guided and governed, the whole 
course, in short, of intellectual and moral disci- 
pline to be pursued in the foundation of the char- 
acter and the habits, and the direction of the 
minds, must radically differ. The great truths 
that we are immortal and responsible beings — 
that the will of our Creator, in reference to our 
conduct and our duty, in thought no less than in 
word and deed, throughout every period of our 
intelligent existence, has been communicated to 
us — and that our present and future well-being, 
in time and throughout eternity, are wholly and 
inevitably dependent upon the affections we now 



14 First Principles of Popular Education. 

hourly and daily cultivate and cherish, the ac- 
tions we now perform, the habits and character 
we are now engaged in maturing — these convic- 
tions, based upon the paramount authority of Di- 
vine Eevelation, must constitute the corner-stone 
of every sound and enlightened system of Chris- 
tian education. The attainment of present pleas- 
ure, the gratification of immediate appetite and 
passion, the acquisition of wealth, of fame, and 
power, as ultimate ends of our ambition, and the 
pursuit of knowledge in all its varied and far- 
reaching shapes, as subsidiary merely to the ac- 
complishment of these objects, or of others ter- 
minating with the individual, may all be secured 
by a process of education in which Christianity, 
both in the letter and in the spirit, may be ig- 
nored ; and through this process the intellectual 
faculties of our nature may be most assiduously 
and extensively cultivated, and many of the no- 
blest and highest objects of society and of gov- 
ernment promoted and accomplished. Such a 
process, however, falls infinitely short of the de- 
mands and requisitions of our higher nature, and 
leaves its finest issues and its noblest capabilities 
untouched and undeveloped. Its most prominent 
and palpable results are before us on every hand : 
in the prevalence of selfishness in all its diversi- 



The Philosophy of Education, 1 5 

fied forms, infusing its poisonous venom tlirougli 
all the avenues of trade, and tainting with its 
polluting and soul-hardening influences the holi- 
est charitii^s of social intercourse ; in the predomi- 
nance of the fierce spirit of war and aggression 
under the most weak and flimsy pretenses of 
patriotism and public spirit; in the wide-spread 
corruption and venality which, under color of a 
noble ambition for the public weal, finds its way 
into the highest places, and preys, unrebuked and 
unpunished, upon the very vitals of the State ; in 
the fearful ravages of the lowest and most debas- 
ing forms of sensuality, passion and appetite, de- 
grading our nature and contaminating at their 
fountain-head all those living springs of taste, 
beauty, and sentiment, which were conferred by 
the Creator for the most beneficent purposes ; and 
last, though not least, in that miserable perver- 
sion of the intellectual and moral faculties of our 
being, which leads so many, in their judgments of 
men and things, to reverse the standard of truth 
and rectitude — to call good evil, and evil good — 
to crown with the approbation and the favor of 
community the successful violator of law and or- 
der — and to cast every possible obstacle in the 
path of the upright and conscientious aspirant 
after honorable distinction and fame. The in- 



1 6 First Principles of Popular Education, 



evitably downward tendency of sucli a state of 
things can never be compensated by the most 
brilliant discoveries in science, or the highest tri- 
umphs of art ; and if the car of modert improve- 
ment can be impelled only by influences which, 
in their expansion over the surface of society, are 
destined to desolate and lay waste the finest 
flowers of the human heart, surely it were bet- 
ter for the interests both of the community at 
large, and of the individuals of which it is com- 
posed, that the boasted march of civilization 
should be arrested, and the rushing tide of in- 
tellectual conquest turned back. No such neces- 
sity, however, exists. Rapid as may be the prog- 
ress and extensive the conquests of physical and 
intellectual science, under a system of mental cul- 
ture which takes comparatively little account of 
the higher and nobler faculties of man's religious 
and moral nature, a still wider and more compre- 
hensive sphere awaits the mind's legitimate ac- 
tions in the full exercise of all its powers, and 
with the clear consciousness of all its capabili- 
ties, responsibilities, and duties, its high origin 
and noble destination. 

Be this as it may, that is unquestionably the 
only sound basis of an enlightened system of ed- 
ucation, which regards its subject as a child of 



The Philosophy of Education, 



17 



God, and tlie heir of immortality — with faculties, 
aifections, and instincts appropriate to this exalt- 
ed heritage — and capable of attaining the full 
perfection of its being, and of realizing the won- 
derful harmonies of its nature only by and 
through the highest practicable cultivation of 
each and all these faculties, affections, and emo- 
tions, in accordance with the will of its great and 
beneficent Creator. 




CHAPTEK 11. 



THE FAMILY. 



REGAEDED from the point of view we Lave 
tlius been led to assume, liow vast, how solemn 
and how responsible is the work of education — 
how unbounded the field of labor — how full of 
embarrassments, of difficulties and of obstacles — 
how incapable of complete and adequate occupa- 
tion — and how liable to neglect and injudicious 
culture ! At that early and most important pe- 
riod of existence, when the intellectual and moral 
faculties first dawn upon the horizon of our being, 
how essential is it that the young should be sur- 
rounded by the purest influences, and by an at- 
mosphere of the highest love and wisdom: by 
instructors prompt to anticipate their struggling 
and urgent demands for knowledge, and to gratify 
their restless and ever active curiosity, to store 
their tender minds with ample and suitable ma- 
terial for thought, wisely to temper the undisci- 
plined luxuriance of their imagination, and to 



The Pamily. 1 9 



regulate, guide and direct their affections, passions 
and emotions! 

Herein consists the appropriate functions and 
momentous duties of the Family — that holy insti- 
tution chartered by the Almighty at the creation 
of man, and consecrated in all ages by his bless- 
ing. In this hallowed circle of love and affection, 
the child first opens his eyes to the varied phe- 
nomena of the external world ; and from thence- 
forth all his senses are tremblingly alive to the 
countless influences brought to bear upon his rap- 
idly expanding faculties. Evanescent as many of 
these earliest impressions upon the infant's mind 
unquestionably are, there can be no doubt that 
some of the most enduring lessons, some of the 
most permanent and ineffaceable traits of the fu- 
ture character, are then implanted. A very con- 
siderable portion of future well or ill-being may, 
indeed, spring from physical causes beyond the 
reach or control of human vigilance or affection, 
however enlightened and judicious. It is an es- 
tablished fact, and one of most momentous import 
to all who seek to become parents, that mental 
and moral, no less than physical characteristics, are 
not unfrequently transmitted in long succession 
from one generation to another; and these heredi- 
tary tendencies, especially when unfavorable to 



20 First Principles of Poptdar Education, 

tlie permanent welfare of tlie cMld, require tlie 
most cautious and considerate mana2:ement. Their 
existence enters as a most 'important element into 
the process of education; and their manifestations, 
to a greater or less extent, can not fail of exerting 
a perceptible influence upon the development and 
formation of character. But aside from this, the 
daily and hourly incidents of the nursery and 
family circle — that little world of home within 
whose sanctuary the energies of the young mind 
are to unfold themselves, and to receive their 
earliest and most lasting hue — the conversation, 
habits, and demeanor of the parents and of those 
to whose care the child is in any degree confided — 
the associations with which it is habitually sur- 
rounded, the affections and passions manifested, 
however unconsciously, in its presence, and the 
entire moral atmosphere in which it is permitted 
to exist — each and all constitute most powerful 
and pervading sources of future character and 
destiny. Those parents, therefore, who from ig- 
norance, inattention, or recklessness neglect those 
proper sanitary precautions which may serve to 
strengthen and invigorate the physical health of 
their offspring, and thereby to shut out a very 
extensive and fertile source of present suffering 
and future bodily and mental anguish ; or who. 



The Family, 2 1 

absorbed in the pressure of business, or the pur- 
suits of worldly pleasure and ambition, neglect 
to watch over the gradual development of those 
young minds committed to their charge ; or still 
more censurably, daily contaminate, by their vi- 
cious and profligate example, conversation and 
habits, the moral nature of their children, are in- 
deed chargeable with a most heinous and irre- 
parable offense, and must be held responsible, in 
the judgment of mankind and in the estimation 
of their Creator, for the deplorable consequences 
which almost invariably follow their improvi- 
dence and guilt. If there be a position or a re- 
lation in the whole circle of human life, where 
enlightened and comprehensive knowledge, sound 
judgment, and an abiding sense of moral and re- 
ligious duty and responsibility are more indis- 
pensable, and the absence of any or either of these 
characteristics more fraught with fatal conse- 
quences than any other, it is that of the parent. 
However frivolous, ignorant, and unprincipled 
men and women may claim and exercise the right 
of " sinning against their own souls " so long as 
their destiny is unconnected intimately with oth- 
ers, they have no riglit to involve in the guilt of 
their ignorance or their infamy the dearest inter- 
ests, for time and eternity, of an innocent and help- 



2 2 First Principles of Popular Education, 

less offspring. They have no right to bring into 
the world beings for whom they are incompetent 
to provide, physically, intellectually or morally; to 
give existence to immortal minds, without either 
the ability or the disposition so to train, cultivate 
and direct those minds, as to render them the 
blessings instead of the bane of their possessors, 
a source of perennial happiness, instead of a tur- 
bid and polluted fountain of wretchedness and 
misery. And the first step of permanent advance- 
ment in the true philosophy and science of Edu- 
cation will then only have been taken when the 
principle shall have been firmly and irrevocably 
established, as the foundation of social order and 
individual and general well-being, that Education, 
in the highest acceptation of the term, shall be 
universal and free, and that neither the willfully 
ignorant nor the persistently vicious man or wom- 
an shall, under any circumstances, be permitted 
to contract the relations of marriage, or to give 
birth to an offspring destined to add to the already 
sufficiently formidable amount of suffering and 
misery, physical and moral, with which the world 
abounds. There can be no hardship, where edu- 
cation is freely dispensed to all, in requiring in- 
dividuals belonging to either of these classes to 
place themselves in a condition rightly to estimate 



The Family, 23 



and intelligently and conscientiously to perform 
the duties of any relation they may desire to con- 
tract, as an indispensable condition to the enjoy- 
ment of its benefits and advantages. There can 
be no oppression on the part of an enlightened 
and virtuous community in insisting upon the dis- 
persion of the baleful mists and deadly vapors of 
ignorance, or the reformation of vicious habits and 
propensities, on the part of each one of its citizens, 
as a preliminary to the full participation of the 
blessings it has to bestow. To the subject of this 
discipline, no less than to those with whom he is 
brought into constant contact in the various rela- 
tions of social life, the requisition insisted upon 
would be itself the highest blessing; and, with 
rare exceptions, he himself would gratefully ap- 
preciate the boon thus conferred, and cheerfully 
and promptly embrace the beneficent opportunity 
thus afforded to attain that mastery and control 
over his rational and immortal nature which 
should enable him to become himself the recipi- 
ent and dispenser of intelligence, happiness and 
virtue. Why should not, then, the community 
avail itself of this its rightful authority to pre- 
vent the perpetuation of ignorance and vice and 
misery, by insisting, at all hazards, upon the in- 
tellectual and moral culture of each and all its 



24 First Principles of Popular Education, 

members, and "by sternly withliolding tlie enjoy- 
ment of its highest, most valuable and most uni- 
versally sought blessing from those who would 
only desecrate its hallowed mysteries, and wretch- 
edly pervert its high and holy objects? 

From the period when the earliest perceptions 
and sensations of the external world first dawn 
upon the infant mind, the process of education 
may be said to begin. The feelings alternately 
of pleasure and of pain, at first dim and indistinct, 
soon connect themselves, intuitively, with the pres- 
ence or absence of certain persons or things ; the 
assiduous attention and affectionate expression of 
love and regard manifested by parents, nurses and 
attendants are early understood and appreciated, 
and the natural signs of anger, harshness and ill 
temper speedily perceived and readily interjDreted; 
and in an almost incredibly short time the child 
adapts and conforms itself to the various circum- 
stances by which it is surrounded; exercises, on 
however limited and restricted a scale, its capaci- 
ties of memory, comparison and inference; and 
makes its first rude essays in the school of practi- 
cal life. Each succeeding event and sensation of 
its subsequent experience brings its corresponding 
lesson, promptly imbibed, and with few and rare 
exceptions permanently retained, as elements, how- 



The Family, 25 



ever inconsiderable in tlieir immediate effects, of 
the future character. From tlie incessant and 
rapid supply of thouglit and emotion thus fur- 
nished to every faculty of the opening nature, 
many of these germs and elements of subsequent 
life must necessarily frequently long lie hidden in 
the deepest recesses of the mind, awaiting the fit 
occasion and the fit period for their development ; 
and nothing is more common in the ripe experi- 
ence of the aged, and amid the most importunate 
pressure of life's varied incidents, than the spon- 
taneous and unexpected reappearance of trains of 
thought 9-nd events long forgotten, but indelibly 
impressed upon the inner surface of the memory, 
and it may be of the heart. Who can compute 
the infiuences, or measure the effects upon the 
future destiny, of these innumerable impressions 
thus made upon the susceptible and retentive 
mind of childhood \ Long years of estrangement 
from the paths of virtue — of dreary wanderings 
in the corrupted and corrupting highways of the 
world — of sad and mournful experience in the 
vain effort to extract happiness and peace of mind 
from the " beggarly elements " of ambition, ava- 
rice or guilty pleasure, can not effectually blot out, 
however they may dim, those ineffaceable records 
of youth and guileless innocence ; and often — how 

B 



26 First Principles of Popular Education, 

often who can know? — they have power, even in 
the darkest hour of despondency and despair, to 
rescue the victim of passion and temptation from 
the deepest gulf of degradation and guilt, and to 
restore him to rectitude, to virtue, and to God ! 

The circumstances, therefore, both moral and 
physical, which surround the child in the infancy 
of its being, and the influences, favorable or un- 
favorable, which at that early period are brought 
to bear upon its susceptible and plastic nature, 
are of the utmost importance to the future devel- 
opment of its character. They insensibly and 
gradually, but inevitably, give a direction and a 
tone to the mental faculties and powers which, 
whether for good or for evil, can not, without great 
difficulty and exertion, be subsequently counter- 
acted. They constitute a portion of elementary 
education far too generally overlooked or neglect- 
ed ; and when so neglected, render the task of the 
teacher, if faithfully and conscientiously performed, 
one of exceeding complication and embarrassment. 
Habits have been contracted and dispositions 
formed and nourished which can be eradicated 
only with great labor and long discipline; and 
elements of character suffered to germinate which, 
in spite of every effort for their repression, may 
be destined in after years fatally to overshadow 



The Family. 2 7 



tlie most promising fruits of intellectual and moral 
culture, and to exert a most disastrous influence 
upon tlie future destiny and life. An enlightened 
knowledge of the elementary principles and most 
important conclusions of physiological science, 
coupled with the ability and the disposition firm- 
ly, systematically and habitually to apply that 
knowledge and those principles, with a judicious 
reference to constitutional peculiarities and cir- 
cumstances ; habitual control of the temper and 
the passions ; the most exemplary, moral and re- 
ligious deportment, in all the varied relations of 
life ; a cultivated and refined taste ; and the uni- 
form indulgence of kindly and affectionate dispo- 
sitions, combined with a no less uniform and in- 
variable repression of vicious propensities and 
habits in their earliest bud; these qualifications 
and acquirements on the part as well of parents 
as of teachers, accompanied by a cheerful, kindly 
and elevating social atmosphere, and the innumer- 
able sources of innocent and healthful pleasure 
which nature has so bountifully and benignantly 
spread out to every uncorrupted sense, will con- 
stitute the surest and most reliable foundation 
for that generous culture of the intellect and the 
heart which is alone worthy the name of Educa- 
tion. 



CHAPTER III. 

PUBLIC INSTEUCTION. 

THE foundations of education and of character 
having thus been laid in the domestic circle, 
the child is, usually at an early period, committed 
to the charge of the elementary teacher. The im- 
portant functions thus delegated should, undoubt- 
edly, for as long a time as may be in any degree 
practicable, continue to be discharged by the 
parents themselves, or at all events under their 
immediate supervision and direction in the famil- 
iar sanctuary of home. If, hov^ever, the school is 
v\^hat it should be, the teacher properly qualified, 
both intellectually and morally, for the discharge 
of the high duties devolving upon him, and the 
surrounding influences of the school-room in all 
respects unobjectionable, the transfer of the pupil 
from the circumscribed sphere to which he has 
hitherto been restricted to a nev^ and more en- 
larged field of action and of effort, can scarcely 
prove otherwise than beneficial. And this leads 



Public Instruction, 29 

us at once to tlie consideration of tlie vitally im- 
portant subject of Public Ii^structioi^ : a subject 
of the deepest interest alike to governments, to 
communities and to individuals. 

In what way, by wbat means, and to what ex- 
tent the State, in its political capacity, may pro- 
mote the interests and subserve the objects of 
popular education — ^what are the duties and re- 
sponsibilities incumbent upon the great body of 
the people, in reference to the intellectual and 
moral culture of the future citizens of the com- 
monwealth — and how those duties may most 
effectually be performed, and those responsibili- 
ties adequately met, are problems which have 
long engaged the attention and occupied the ef- 
forts of the statesman and philanthropist, but 
hitherto without results at all corresponding to 
the magnitude of the interests at stake. By 
some it has been maintained that every civilized 
community possesses the power and the right to 
withdraw the child wholly from the parent, and 
to place him under the exclusive guardianship 
and care of instructors named by and responsi- 
ble only to the State ; while others have denied 
both the expediency and the right of interference 
on the part of the government, to any extent 
whatever, in the education of the young. These, 



30 First Principles of Popular Education, 



however, are extreme views on both sides, and 
like all other extreme views upon subjects of 
practical importance in the conduct of human life, 
are to be received with great caution, if not en- 
tirely rejected and discountenanced. The right 
of the State to take cognizance of the education 
of its future citizens, if it be conceded to exist, 
must, undoubtedly, be exercised in subordination 
to, or concurrently with, the paramount right of 
its component members to the unrestricted enjoy- 
ment of all those social, domestic, and individual 
privileges for which governments and society it- 
self exist ; and any regulation which, under pre- 
tenses even of a greater ultimate good, should un- 
dertake to contravene this fundamental principle 
would, it is conceived, be not only impolitic, but 
unjust and oppressive. On the other hand, to 
deny to the body-politic any jurisdiction what- 
ever over the mental and moral culture of the 
youth of the State, and to exclude from the legiti- 
mate domain of legislation every thing pertaining 
to the work of education, would be effectually to 
neutralize the influence of every other salutary 
agency in the machinery of human government, 
and to render the progress of improvement ab- 
solutely impossible. The power to punish the 
criminal offender would seem not more certainly 



Pttblic Instruction. • 31 



and unquestionably an attribute of all govern- 
ments, tlian tliat of restraining and preventing 
the commission of the crime itself, whenever and 
wherever such restraint and ]3reventiou may be 
practicable and attainable : and the same funda- 
mental laws which are confessedly competent, in 
the prosecution of the great objects for which 
they are instituted, to interfere with the liberty 
and even to take the life of the transgressor aiid 
the felon, are surely no less competent to pre- 
scribe and to adopt those means of prevention 
which may avert the necessity of such punish- 
ment, and thereby free the community from all 
those repulsive and demoralizing concomitants 
which are found almost invariably to follow in 
its train. The obligation and the duty of the 
State to provide a proper asylum and a comforta- 
ble support for the indigent and the helpless is 
generally admitted ; its riglit to do so unquestion- 
ed by any. Is it, then, to be presumed that no 
power exists in the legislative department of the 
government to adopt such prudential measures 
as observation and experience may from time to 
time suggest, for the diminution of those phys- 
ical and moral evils, which lie at the root of pau- 
perism and mendicity % A supposition so strik- 
ingly at variance with every dictate of sound wis- 



32 First Principles of Popular Education, 



dom and practical morality, is scarcely to be tol- 
erated by any mind at all conversant witli the 
fundamental principles of an enlightened political 
economy. 

The concurrent testimony of the ablest and 
most experienced educators of our own and other 
lands affords the most conclusive assurances that 
under a well - administered and efficient system 
of universal education, " ninety-nine out of every 
hundred^ even of the generation first submitted to 
the experiment, may be rendered honest dealers, 
conscientious jurors, true witnesses, incorruptible 
voters or magistrates, good parents, good neigh- 
bors, good members of society, temperate, indus- 
trious and frugal, conscientious in all their deal- 
ings, prompt to pity and instruct ignorance, pub- 
lic-spirited, philanthropic, and observers of all 
things sacred." Has then the State, in its cor- 
porate capacity, no interest in this great work — 
no power to help it on — no aid to render it — no 
encouragement, sympathy, or co-operation to be- 
stow upon it ? It has been fully and repeatedly 
demonstrated by scientific and practical men, that 
the aggregate amount of industry in any commu- 
nity may be immensely increased by means of 
general and specific intellectual culture; that in 
any given pursuit, trade, or occupation, the in- 



Public Instruction, 33 

dividual of most varied information and accurate 
knowledge possesses decided advantages in tlie 
acctimulation and rational enjoyment of wealth 
over all competitors less favored in this regard; 
and that the various avenues leading to mercan- 
tile, manufacturing, or agricultural success, may 
be far more profitably occupied by the educated, 
than by the ignorant or the superficial. Has the 
State, as such, no concern in this % Has it no 
functions by means of which it can encourage 
and reward individual or associated enterprise or 
exertion — can repress and discourage indolence 
and sloth — can remove the pressure of poverty — 
expand the operations of agriculture, manufact- 
ures, and commerce, and build the superstructure 
of national greatness upon the desirable founda- 
tions of an enlightened and well-directed indus- 
try? 

Such has not been the construction hitherto 
put upon the high objects of government and 
legislation by the great statesmen and profound 
politicians of our own or other lands. From 
whence, it may be inquired, do we derive the 
very existence of property ? what gives to it its 
value ? what protects, preserves, and defends it 
against violence, subtlety, fraud, and craft % and 
what enables its possessor to enjoy and to use it 

B2 



34 First Principles of Popular Education, 

witli safety and profit \ Is it not the power and 
tlie influence of a paternal government, securing 
the prevalence of good order throughout the com- 
munity, establishing and maintaining just laws, 
affording adequate remedies for their violation, 
and watching over the welfare and safety of the 
humblest equally with the highest citizen of the 
commonwealth ? 

And has not the general diffusion of sound 
knowledge, the inculcation of pure morality, the 
formation of virtuous habits, the presence and 
operation of a pervading sentiment of integrity, 
an undeniable tendency to render the possession 
and enjoyment of property more secure, more 
valuable and certain ? Do they not immeasura- 
bly enhance its worth, encourage its acquisition, 
and ensure its profits ? Surely we have only to 
contrast our own privileges in this respect with 
that general insecurity which prevails in the 
semi - civilized or barbarous nations of the Old 
World, and which uniformly accompanies the 
prevalence of ignorance and moral degradation, 
to be convinced of these facts. And is it not 
within the personal experience of most business 
men, that the pecuniary value of real estate, es- 
pecially when thrown into market, is in a very 
great degree affected, "favorably or adversely, by 



Public Instruction, 35 

tlie presence or absence of an enlightened, or- 
derly, and law-abiding neigliborliood ? Should 
not then the aggregate wealth of the State be 
applied, to such an extent as may be necessary, 
to furnish an ample fund, the avails of which are 
to be thus expended in providing every citizen 
a sure guaranty for the undisturbed enjoyment 
of his home, his possessions, and his personal 
rights ? 

If then it be true that the general and un- 
restricted diffusion of knowledge has a direct 
and necessary tendency to prevent the commis- 
sion of crime, by removing all inducements to 
evil courses, and by substituting in their stead 
the operation of motives leading to a diametrical- 
ly opposite result — if it be true that the preva- 
lence of sound and enlightened views of intellect- 
ual and moral culture, and the general reduction 
of these views to practice, would, in all human 
probability, result in the speedy extinction of 
mendicity, or would at all events restrict it to 
cases of rare occurrence, and such as are beyond 
the reach of ordinary remedies — and if all history, 
observation, and experience concur in the princi- 
ple that the elevation, the prosperity and ad- 
vancement of individuals, of communities and of 
nations in physical and material no less than in 



2,6 First Principles of Popular Education, 

mental and moral well-being, are uniformly in a 
direct ratio to their attainments in knowledge and 
their progress in virtue — the inference would seem 
to be irresistible that the first, the most sacred 
duty of a Christian State, is adequately to pro- 
vide for the proper education of all its citizens. 
Individual effort in this direction, however judi- 
ciously applied and energetically prosecuted, will 
almost inevitably be found incompetent to the at- 
tainment of the object in view; and while through 
the penury and inability of some, the indifference 
of more, and the open hostility of others, the prog- 
ress made by the most devoted friends of educa- 
tion might be neutralized and their exertions ren- 
dered unavailing, is it for a moment to be ad- 
mitted that the potent arm of the State is so 
shortened and paralyzed that it can not interpose 
to strengthen the feeble, to give confidence to 
the timid and wavering, and to remove the nu- 
merous and formidable obstacles thrown in the 
path of improvement by the vicious, the idle, and 
the indifferent ? Such a supposition is wholly at 
variance with every sound principle of govern- 
ment and legislation. 

We regard it, therefore, as imperative upon the 
State, that elementary instruction should be free- 
ly and equally dispensed to all, in institutions rec- 



Public Instruction, 37 

ognized, sanctioned, and sustained by itself, open 
at all times to tlie ricli and to the poor — " without 
money and without price " — that this instruction 
should be, in all cases, adequate to the communi- 
cation of that degree of knowledge, at least, which 
shall enable its recipient intelligently and effi- 
ciently to perform all those duties which, in the 
ordinary course of human events, and the inter- 
course of society, may devolve upon him, and to 
attain such farther and higher acquirements as 
his ambition or inclination may require ; and that 
by the proper preparation of a suitable number 
of teachers, thoroughly conversant with their pro- 
fession, and skilled in all its practical details, an 
adequate inducement may be presented to the 
community at large to avail itself of their services, 
and to bring within the school thus established 
every child of suitable age to be benefited by 
their instruction and discipline. We claim that 
the right of every child in the State to such an 
education as shall be adequate to the proper dis- 
charge of the obligations and responsibilities in- 
cident to human life, should be distinctly recog- 
nized and efficiently guaranteed by the supreme 
power of the State, and that the means of secur- 
ing such an education should be provided by an 
equal and just assessment upon its aggregate 



38 First Principles of Popular Education, 



wealth. With especial reference to our country 
and its institutions, we insist that in a republican 
form of government, where all political power 
emanates, directly or indirectly, from the people 
themselves, general education is absolutely indis- 
pensable, and of vital and paramount importance; 
that, from the earliest period of our existence as a 
people, this principle has been recognized and 
acted upon by those communities where the 
greatest moral, social, and political advancement 
has been made ; that it has taken root and flour- 
ished wherever the great body of the people have 
tested its advantages and afforded it a fair scope 
for developing its capabilities ; and that wherever 
it has been introduced and obtained a firm foot- 
hold, it has never been abandoned. We allege 
that upon the general prevalence of intelligence 
and virtue, of sound science and uncorrupted mo- 
rality, not only the happiness and welfare of each 
individual of the community, but the very foun- 
dations of society and government, essentially 
depend ; that the wealth and resources of the com- 
munity can in no mode be so profitably and ad- 
vantageously invested, even in a merely pecuniary 
point of view, than by the promotion and general 
diffusion of useful knowledge; and that every 
dollar thus contributed to the mental and moral 



Public Instruction, 39 



culture of tlie youtli of the State, at that impor- 
tant period when the rudiments of character are 
in process of formation, is an actual saving of 
hundreds of thousands, which, in the absence or 
neglect of such culture, must be lavished within 
a few brief years in the conviction and punish- 
ment of crime, or the support of mendicants and 
paupers. Finally, we insist that while the State, 
in its civil and political capacity, undoubtedly 
possesses the power of repressing every infraction 
of its laws and ordinances, and of imposing upon 
the whole body of its citizens an annual tax for 
defraying the enormous expenditure incident to 
the administration of criminal justice, it as un- 
doubtedly possesses the power of prevention^ in. 
the provision of early and ample facilities for the 
education and instruction of its future citizens, 
thereby removing every inducement and inclina- 
tion to vice and crime, and substituting in their 
stead nobler and higher aims, purer aspirations, 
and wiser and better motives of action ; and that 
the obvious dictates of common policy, no less 
than of a sound and enlightened political econ- 
omy, point to the expediency and salutary effi- 
cacy of such ample provision for the education 
soldi instruction of the rising generation as shall 
preclude the necessity of an immensely great- 



40 First Principles of Popular Edttcation, 

er outlay for their future punishonent and sup- 
port 

These are some of tlie advantages and bless- 
ings wHcli the advocates of Universal Education, 
through a system of schools open and free to all, 
supported and liberally endov^^ed by the govern- 
ment of the State itself, propose to secure : the 
diminution of vice and crime by the effectual re- 
moval of every inducement to their perpetration, 
and by the early formation of habits and disposi- 
tions at variance v^ith their existence ; the preven- 
tion of pauperism and mendicity by the bestow- 
ment of the power and the v^ill to accomplish all 
the necessary objects of human existence; and the 
general prevalence of integrity, humanity, benev- 
olence, industry, and public and private morality 
by the timely and assiduous inculcation of all 
those pure and elevating principles v^hich refine 
and ennoble our common nature. The future wel- 
fare and prosperity of each individual will thus 
become indissolubly associated with those of every 
other, in the bonds of one common interest ; fully 
aware that the sole security for the undisturbed 
enjoyment and quiet possession of the property 
each may accumulate or obtain is to be found in 
the integrity, intelligence and virtue of the sur- 
rounding community, and that the every existence 



Public Instruction. 41 

and perpetuation of the government under wliicli 
these blessings are to be enjoyed, these rights and 
immunities secured and obtained, are dependent 
upon an enlightened and uncorrupted public sen- 
timent. • 




CHAPTER IV. 

THE SCHOOL ELEMENTAEY IIS^STEUCTIOI^. 

THE education of the senses, tlie discipline of the 
affections and passions, and the formation of the 
habits, constitute the earliest task of the element- 
ary teacher. Before the intellect can perform the 
various processes of comparison, analysis, thought, 
reason and imagination, it must he furnished with 
the materials upon which to exercise its powers; 
and while the disposition is yet docile, the pas- 
sions undeveloped, and the will unbiased, that 
direction should be given to the plastic energies 
of the moral nature which will most effectually 
preserve it from the .evil tendencies to which it is 
destined to be exposed, and those habits superin- 
duced which will serve as ever present and potent 
auxiliaries to a uniform course of virtue in after 
life. This portion of education, as it is by far the 
most important, and most decisive of the future 
character, so it should commence under the pater- 



The School — Elementary Instruction. 43 

nal guidance witli tlie earliest dawn of conscious- 
ness, and be unintermittingly prosecuted through 
every subsequent stage of progress. 

The first impressions of childhood — its earliest 
associations when life is new and existence itself 
one continued source of pleasure and enjoyment — 
are, as is well known, the most lasting and dura- 
ble. Each successive acquisition affords intense 
delight and fixes itself permanently in the memo- 
ry. Each exertion of the incipient powers, each 
sensation of the expanding being, each involun- 
tary emotion and affection excited into activity 
by the passing scenes and events of the narrow 
circle into which the experience of the young 
learner is compressed, becomes the germ of future 
action and character. How important then that 
no element of falsehood and deception should be 
interposed to obscure the dawning conceptions, 
that no unnecessary obstacles should be thrown 
in the path of knowledge, and above all, that 
no exhibition of angry passions or of evil and 
vicious habits should be permitted to cast its 
withering blight upon the tender and susceptible 
heart ! 

Early, however, as is the period, in the gener- 
ality of instances, when the course of instruction 
is commenced in the school, the teacher finds 



44 First Principles of Popular Education, 

mucli of error to be unlearned — many false and 
inaccurate conceptions to be corrected — many evil 
passions to be repressed — ^many injurious habits 
to be eradicated — many new principles to be im- 
planted, cherislied and cultivated. The associa- 
tions of the school-room are v^ell calculated to fos- 
ter and promote these important objects. The 
strict regard to discipline — the uniform order, 
regularity and system which prevail — the rigid 
enforcement of obedience, punctuality, neatness 
and decorum — the periodical alternations of study 
and relaxation — the varied exercises of the class- 
room — all serve to impress upon the pupil's mind 
the most salutary and beneficial lessons, and lead 
him imperceptibly to regard himself as a constitu- 
ent portion of the little community to which he 
has become attached — interested in its welfare as 
something distinct from his own individual per- 
sonality — a participant in its benefits and enjoy- 
ments — responsible to others for his conduct and 
attainments — and while subjected to the whole- 
some restraints of a necessary discipline, exposed 
to the good or ill opinion of his associates, the 
approbation or censure of all who take an interest 
in his welfare, and the scrutinizing regard of the 
public authorities. That desire for knowledge, 
inherent in every well-constituted mind — that 



The School — Elementary Instruction. 45 



restless, insatiable curiosity and inqiiisitiveness 
peculiar to cMldhood — find their gratification at 
each successive step of progress, while excited to 
fresh explorations in the wide domain of science, 
knowledge soon becomes desirable for its own 
sake — is its own exceeding great reward. The 
mind of the learner grows more and more inter- 
ested as it gradually opens to the objects and 
uses of the leissons daily communicated, and be- 
gins to explore, by the aid of the new resources 
placed at its command, the wonders and beauties 
of the external universe. 

Nature assumes a new and deeply interesting 
aspect, as the flower, the leaf and the grass, the 
vegetable, the plant and the mineralare analyzed 
and decomposed — their structure, functions, ob- 
jects, uses, means and ends pointed out — their 
relations to man explained — their position in the 
great scheme of creative wisdom and beneficence 
illustrated and defined — their origin and history 
rendered " familiar as household words," and all 
those associations which connect them with the 
daily pursuits and highest welfare of mankind 
brought to bear, through those familiar illustra- 
tions which the well-informed teacher can render 
so attractive and instructive. Those elementary 
branches of study usually so irksome and so 



46 First Principles of Popular Education. 

tedious under tlie guidance of the mere pedagogue, 
become invested witli the deepest interest, and 
clothed with the most captivating charms, when 
informed with life and animation by the potent 
wand of the true teacher. The acquisition of the 
alphabet and its combination into words and syl- 
lables become a labor of love, when their connec- 
tion with the inexhaustible treasures of learning 
and science through the medium of books is fully 
exjDlained and comprehended; and the task in- 
volved in the reading-lesson is forgotten in the 
absorbing interest of the subject. Orthography 
and grammar, when regarded as the indispensable 
accompaniments of a graceful and accurate ex- 
pression, are readily and easily mastered; geogra- 
phy, when combined with and illustrated by 
history, and a clear, simple and intelligible exposi- 
tion of the form, structure, movements, and 230sition 
of the planet on which we live, assumes at once 
a lively interest; and even the abstruse combina- 
tions of arithmetic are found to possess a fascinat- 
ing charm the moment its complicated researches 
are discovered to have an intrinsic and practical 
value, and an application to the most important 
and interesting pursuits of life. 

The foundations and elementary principles of 
the highest mathematics, of astronomy, natural 



The School — Eleme^itary Instruction,. 47 



pMlosophy, chemistry and geology, may in this 
attractive manner be advantageously and firmly 
laid in the primary school. By familiar exposi- 
tions, conversation and simple illustrations, a spirit 
of animated inquiry and research is elicited on 
the part of the least advanced pupils, which leads 
insensibly to farther and more complete investiga- 
tion, and excites an interest in the youthful mind 
which can not be repressed. The spirit of in- 
quiry and research can not be too diligently en- 
couraged and fostered on the part of parents and 
teachers. It affords a source of pleasurable occu- 
pation to the child — diverts its mind from frivo- 
lous pursuits — prevents it from yielding up its 
faculties and powers to indolence and sloth — 
secures it against the numerous temptations to 
vicious pursuits and indulgences, and prepares it 
for those nobler and higher efforts which lead to 
greatness and to fame. It imbues the intellect 
with valuable and practical ideas, while its inva- 
riable tendency is to enlarge the affections and to 
strengthen and invigorate the moral powers, b^^^*\^ 
directing and fastening the attention upon tne 
wonderful and beautiful manifestations in the 
world, both of matter and of mind, of the infinite 
and all-wise Creator. I know of no more saluta- 
ry and profitable mental and moral discipline 



48 First Principles of Popular Education, 

wliicli can be bestowed upon tlie child on its first 
introduction into our institutions of elementary 
instruction, and during tlie entire period of its 
continuance there, than those unpretending and 
simple, but deeply interesting and instructive les- 
sons on the objects which surround us in the ex- 
ternal universe, the uses they respectively sub- 
serve in the economy of nature, their adaptations 
to the varied pursuits of industry and science and 
the arts of life, the laws which they obey, their 
origin and history, and their mutual interdepend- 
ence and connection. For want of this early 
and continued discipline, how many of our ripest 
scholars and most eminent men still remain pro- 
foundly ignorant of many of those fundamental 
laws and principles which regulate and preside 
over the development of the most important phe- 
nomena of the planet on which they exist ! How 
many among our population, of all classes and 
grades, experience numerous and serious misfor- 
tunes, commit grievous practical errors, and suf- 
fer constant embarrassment and inconvenience ! 
How much of energy and talent and tact, which 
rightly directed and skillfully applied might 
have accomplished great and beneficent results, 
is wasted, perverted and misapplied ; and how 
lamentably and seriously has the progress of true 



The School — Elementary Instruction. 49 

knowledge among tlie mass of mankind been re- 
tarded by tlie prevalence of erroneous views and 
tke adoption of false and unsound principles of 
action ! 




C 



CHAPTER V. 

INTELLECTUAL CULTUEE. 

THE most ample provision should be made in 
every enlightened system of education for the 
development and culture of all the faculties, in- 
tellectual and moral, of the mind. With this 
view, an adequate and comprehensive knowledge 
of those faculties, their mode of operation, the le- 
gitimate sphere of their action, and of their dis- 
tinctive peculiarities, is indispensable. Without 
attempting the impracticable task of sounding 
the depths of mental and moral philosophy so 
clearly expounded by the ablest metaphysicians 
and divines of ancient and modern times, the 
prominent results of these investigations, as con- 
firmed and established by the observation and 
experience of successive ages, may be briefly ad- 
verted to. 

It is an incontrovertible principle of a sound 
philosophy of the human mind, that for every 
faculty, affection and emotion of our complex na- 



IntellectMal Culture, 5 1 



ture, an appropriate and legitimate field of action 
and exertion lias been prepared; and that with- 
in tliis range, all its operations are attended with 
pleasure, with improvement and benefit. Each 
of these faculties, affections and emotions, is, how- 
ever, liable to perversion and abuse : and when- 
ever through ignorance, recklessness or design, the 
beneficent law of its functions is transcended, the 
inevitable and invariable consequence of such de- 
parture is sooner or later experienced in positive 
suffering and misery, physical or moral, and to an 
extent corresponding with the importance of the 
fundamental law or principle which has thus been 
violated. Every institution of the Creator through- 
out the vast amplitude of his manifestations, and 
especially in the domain of the human mind, is 
clearly indicative of the highest wisdom, and most 
unbounded love ; and in all the operations of his 
hands no element of evil exists except through 
the transgression of those laws which he has or- 
dained for the highest happiness and well-being 
of his creatures. 

The power of transgression — the ability freely, 
and without other restraint than the knowledge 
of his will and of our duty, the dictates of con- 
science, and of the voice of God within our soul — 
to conform to the law of our being, in accordance 



5 2 First Principles of Popular Education, 

witli tlie clear injunctions of that inward monitor 
enthroned in every breast, and with the corre- 
sponding oracles of Divine Truth communicated 
in the Holy Scriptures, or to depart from that law, 
trample upon these injunctions, and disregard 
these high oracles — this power and ability are es- 
sential and necessary concomitants of humanity — 
by which alone we attain to the proper dignity 
of our nature, and without which we sink to the 
level of the beasts that perish. 

Among the various faculties of the human 
mind, tlie dedre of 'knowledge seems to be earliest 
developed. To this end the perceptions and sen- 
sitive powers — those which take cognizance of the 
phenomena of the external world and of the feel- 
ings and emotions of the sentient nature within, 
are conferred, and find a wide and diversified 
scope of action, constantly enlarging and expand- 
ing with the experience of each individual. At 
first these perceptions and emotions are vague, 
indistinct and unintelligible. By imperceptible 
degrees, however, they become more clear and defi- 
nite, and capable of being sharply discriminated 
and referred to their appropriate classes in the 
rapid succession of events. One field after another 
of knowledge is appropriated, and to a greater or 
less extent mentally digested and arranged ; and 



Intellectual Culture, 53 

in comparatively a very brief period, a vast amount 
of valuable information, more or less accurate and 
reliable, is accumulated for future use. This pro- 
cess is one of exceeding interest and importance ; 
and it is specially incumbent upon parents and 
teachers not only to encourage and promote its 
exercise on all suitable occasions, but to render 
its results practical and useful in the highest pos- 
sible degree, with reference to all the future con- 
tingencies of life, and to the growth and compre- 
hensiveness of the intellectual and moral power. 
The natural and urgent curiosity of the young 
inquirer should never be repressed and seldom 
diverted ; and full, specifiCj and accurate informa- 
tion should be communicated on all topics within 
the compass of the tender understanding. Large 
and frequent excursions should be made into the 
boundless domains of Nature in all her wonderful 
and beautiful manifestations, and the eager and 
docile attention of the deeply-interested learner 
directed into those attractive channels of investi- 
gation and knowledge which are capable of yield- 
ing the most valuable and profitable results for 
subsequent thought and improvement. The act- 
ive and retentive energies of the youthful intel- 
lect will rapidly absorb and assimilate the mental 
food thus placed within its reach, and its facul- 



54 First Principles of Popular Education, 

ties, fresli and unweariecl, will store up in tlie re- 
ceptacles of the nnburdened memory, ample sup- 
plies for its future aliment. Tlie value of early, 
general and accurate knowledge tlius agreeably 
and pleasurably obtained, can scarcely be too 
highly estimated. It affords not only a delight- 
ful, innocent and ever accessible source of occupa- 
tion to the restless energies, both physical and 
mental, of the young, but an inexhaustible well- 
spring of intellectual and moral truth and beauty, 
which will diffuse its refreshing waters over the 
entire surface of subsequent life. Confused, im- 
perfect, and inaccurate conceptions, no less than 
blank ignorance or gross error, involve innumera- 
ble elements of misfortune and error. 

It has been observed, not without a strong 
foundation in the experience of individuals and 
communities, that ignorance is itself the chief and 
prolific source of error and of guilt; that with 
clear perceptions of truth, neither the understand- 
ing nor the reason could be essentially led astray, 
nor the higher moral and religious faculties per- 
verted, and that an early, full and enlightened 
comprehension of the elementary principles and 
details of science, of the manifestations and laws 
of the various phenomena of the external world, 
could not fail gradually but surely to extirpate 



Intellectual Culture, 5 5 

the numerous and baleful seeds of human error 
and consequent suffering. Certain it is, that a 
very large proportion of the ills of life, physical 
as well as moral, are fairly attributable to the 
absence of sound and accurate knowledge ; to a 
failure or inability to comprehend the great laws 
of the universe of matter and of mind, and the in- 
variable relations they sustain to each other and 
to the permanent well-being of the race ; to the 
want of an early familiarity with the fundamental 
principles of scientific inquiry and research, and 
to the unjustifiable neglect, on the part of those 
to whom the education of the young is confided, 
to cultivate, cherish, and direct that innate and 
irrepressible spirit of curiosity and that ardent 
desire for knowledge which is the universal char- 
acteristic of the youthful mind. Early impres- 
sions, wliether true or false, are of unyielding 
tenacity. They incorporate themselves perma- 
nently into the character, and become constituent 
portions of the principles which* regulate and de- 
termine the whole of future life ; and by their ex- 
pansion and diffusion, a tone and an impulse are 
given to the whole body, politic and social. The 
interests of true wisdom and virtue may be thus 
extensively promoted and advanced, or the do- 
minions of error and of vice increased, strengthen- 



56 First Principles of Popular Education, 



ed and perpetuated, by the true or false direction 
given to the earliest aspirations and strongest im- 
pulses of the expanding intellect. 

The desire of knowledge is, in its primary man- 
ifestations, purely an intellectual faculty, embrac- 
ing in its scope the entire phenomena of the visi- 
ble universe, irrespective of their practical value 
or the various uses to which they may be applied. 
The special function of the teacher consists in the 
systematic classification and proper arrangement 
of this knowledge in such a form as to render it 
available for future thought and action. To this 
end, in addition to the ordinary elementary 
branches of instruction, the science of natural his- 
tory in all its varieties, of natural philosophy, 
physiology, the higher mathematics, astronomy, 
chemistry and geology, with their kindred pur- 
suits, accompanied by ample illustrations* and ex- 
periments, should engage the early and assiduous 
attention of the pupil. Ancient and modern his- 
tory should be thoroughly mastered, and a due 
proportion of time devoted to the acquisition of 
the languages. No department of useful knowl- 
edge should be neglected, even though its results 
should have no direct bearing upon the future 
pursuits of the student. The portion of time, how- 
ever, and the degree of attention to be bestowed 



Intellectual Culture, 5 7 

upon each, should have reference to the circum- 
stances and condition of the individual, to the 
peculiar profession, trade, or occupation for which 
he may be designed, 4o his predominant taste or 
genius, and to the general characteristics of the 
age and the community in which his lot has been 
cast. The acquisition of knowledge in all its 
branches, however thorough and general, and in- 
dispensable as it is to all subsequent progress, 
is the foundation only of the work of education 
— the process by which the materials for future 
culture and improvement are supplied, and the 
store-house of the mind furnished with adequate 
instruments for its important operations. 

The higher faculties of reason, judgment and 
imagination — the powers of combination, compari- 
son and discrimination — next demand our atten- 
tion, and require the most judicious and careful 
development. Facts being supplied from every 
attainable source, elementary principles acquired 
and established, and the vast panorama of nature 
and art spread out before our view, the enlarge- 
ment and expansion of the intellectual domain 
by means of thought, reflection, reason and fancy, 
become the congenial occupation of the more ad- 
vanced mind. The various uses, objects, and ends 
of the knowledge which has been acquired, its 

C 2 



58 First Principles of Popular Education. 



capacity of subserving tlie practical pursuits of 
life, tlie benefit and interest of individuals and 
communities, and tlie advancement and promotion 
of tlie moral and religious nature; the mode in 
whicli tliose uses, objects and ends may most ef- 
fectually be accomplished, and the practicability 
of still farther and higher excursions into the 
realms of thought and imagination — all these 
sources of future usefulness should be systemat- 
ically opened and explained. 

While, however, in every well-regulated system 
of education, ample provision should be made for 
the highest possible cultivation of each and all 
these faculties, careful discrimination is necessary 
in individual instances, with reference to the earli- 
er or later development of the several intellectual 
powers, the prevailing bias of mind, and the 
peculiar circumstances and situation of each. The 
infinite diversity in these and other equally impor- 
tant respects, so abundantly manifest in the capac- 
ities, inclinations, and conditions of different indi- 
viduals, palpably requires the most vigilant atten- 
tion and the most judicious guidance on the part 
of the teacher. Every faculty of the human mind 
should undoubtedly be developed and cultivated; 
each, however, in its appropriate season, and con- 
formably to its relation and connection with all 



Intellectual Ctilture. 59 



tlie otliers, and to tlie peculiar idiosyncrasy of the 
possessor; and a wise and constant reference should 
be had to his actual position in life, and probable 
future pursuits and sphere of action. From the 
well-known and universally conceded influence of 
physical causes, hereditary tendencies, and sur- 
rounding circumstances, the intellectual powers 
of one individual may be prematurely and rapid- 
ly developed, while those of another may, to a 
very great extent, remain long in abeyance and 
inaction. One manifests at a very early period 
an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and an ability 
to grasp and to retain all the great results of lit- 
erature and science, with a due appreciation of 
their relative importance and value, while anoth- 
er may long vegetate in utter indifference to their 
claims, or without comprehending any thing be- 
yond the groveling and contracted sphere of his 
animal existence. To the finer issues of the men- 
tal constitution of the one, all nature presents one 
vast theatre of harmony, richness and beauty, and 
his ears are open to the ravishing melody of those 
great master spirits of poetry, philosophy and 
eloquence, who in every age and in every clime 
have discoursed of its varied manifestations, and 
of the powers, faculties, and destination of human- 
ity; while to the obtuse and blunted senses of the 



6o First Principles of Popular Education. 

other, all tliese inexhaustible sources of pleasure 
and improvement are utterly uncongenial and un- 
known. For one mind, tlie arts of painting, statu- 
ary, music, or machinery possess an engrossing and 
irresistible attraction ; for another, the more prac- 
tical pursuits of statesmanship, legislation and 
political economy ; for another, literature and sci- 
ence, the professions of law, medicine or divinity, 
or some of the numerous avocations of business or 
pleasure which minister to the profit, advantage, 
or temporal happiness of those engaged in their 
pursuit. 

All these peculiarities and circumstances, affect- 
ing, as they necessarily must, the entire intel- 
lectual and moral constitution, and exerting a 
most important influence upon the formation of 
the future character, are carefully and judiciously 
to be taken into the account, and made the basis 
of the mental culture. When one or more facul- 
ties are disproportionately developed, to such an 
extent as clearly to indicate a predominant and 
overshadowing influence over others, every effort 
should be made to restore, as far as may be prac- 
ticable, ihe equilibrium of the mental powers, not 
so much by repressing the manifestations or re- 
stricting the exercise of the former, as by assidu- 
ously cultivating and bringing forward the latter. 



Intellectual Culture, 6 1 



Every attempt, openly or covertly, by authority 
or persuasion, to restrain or subdue tlie powerful 
tendencies of a mind thus constituted toward the 
legitimate objects of its preference, will be found 
either utterly futile or eminently, and it may be 
permanently, dis^trous in its results. Except in 
cases where positive evil or injury may reasonably 
be anticipated from an unrestrained indulgence in 
the master -passion of the intellect, the only safe 
counteracting agency is conceived to lie in a judi- 
cious and systematic diversion of the attention to 
other mental exercises and pursuits, and by in- 
vesting these with the greatest possible attractions. 
The brilliant hues of the imagination and fancy 
may thus advantageously be thrown over the less 
congenial and more practical pursuits of the intel- 
lect, elevating these to a more commanding height, 
and softening and modifying those to a nearer 
conformity to the palpable realities of every-day 
life. « The exactness, precision, and perfect symme- 
try of mathematical demonstration, may profitably 
be brought to bear upon the excessive tendency 
of the imaginative powers to an unrestrained 
and luxuriant development, and each faculty of 
the mind in its turn allowed to strengthen, modify, 
or restrain the action of every other in strict 
accordance with those higher principles and laws 



62 First Principles of Popular Education. 

wliicli should preside over all. The entire and 
absorbing devotion of the intellect and the heart 
to one engrossing passion or pursuit, and the con- 
centration of all the physical and mental energies 
upon that idol of the affection, however conducive 
to the progress and perfection^of particular sci- 
ences, arts, or industrial avocations, and however 
contributing to the formation and maturity of 
strongly marked character and originality, are 
manifestly unfavorable to that equable and 
healthy growth of mental and moral character 
which alone can enable the individual to fulfill 
his whole duty to himself, to the community of 
which he is a member, and to his Creator. 




CHAPTER VI. 

SYSTEMS OF rN-STRUCTIOI^. 

THAT system of instruction is the soundest and 
best which, in the shortest period of time, most 
fully and completely develops the mental facul- 
ties equably, harmoniously, and in accordance with 
the practical functions required of each, in the in- 
tercourse with the world. The mere communica- 
tion of knowledge, of whatever kind, is not in- 
struction. The ability and the disposition to 
receive, to understand, and to profit by it, must 
exist. The attention must be awakened ; an in- 
terest in the subject under consideration must be 
excited ; elementary principles and habits of 
thought must be formed ; and that persevering in- 
dustry which refuses to abandon any investiga- 
tion until its purport is thoroughly comprehended, 
must be cultivated. Clearness of conception and a 
systematic process of instruction are also most im- 
portant, if not indispensable requisites to the at- 



64 First Principles of Popular Education, 

tainment of solid instruction in any and every 
department of scientific research. 
* It is incumbent, therefore, upon the teacher, 
in the outset of his labors, so to discipline and 
prepare the minds of his pupils as to enable them 
efficiently to co-operate with him in the work of 
instruction. They must be thrown to as great 
an extent as possible upon their own intellectual 
resources. They must be taught not only the 
rudiments and first principles of knowledge, but 
liow to think, and how to obtain knowledge for 
themselves. They must be made acquainted with 
the powers, faculties, and capabilities of their own 
minds, and accustomed at the earliest practicable 
period to exert their own energies of thought and 
reason, of discrimination and deduction. Self- 
reliance and the power of self instruction should 
be inculcated and conferred : and nothing super- 
ficial, nothing incapable of clear and satisfactory 
elucidation from their own intellectual stores, 
should be permitted to pass current for genuine 
knowledge. 

Perhaps the most important preliminary to a 
systematic course of instruction consists in a 
proper classification of pupils, with reference not 
merely to their respective attainments, but to 
their general capacities and peculiar genius and 



Systems of Instruction, 65 

talents. This, in the majority of instances, will 
require considerable time, close observation, and 
the exercise of nice discrimination on the part of 
the teacher. It not unfrequently happens that 
in the examination of some of the more advanced 
classes in our schools, the chief burden falls upon 
a very few who exhibit a remarkable degree of 
ability, while a majority of their associates are 
correspondingly deficient. This indicates an er- 
roneous classification, and is productive of the 
most injurious consequences to the future prog- 
ress of those pupils who have thus been left be- 
hind. A comparison of their own attainments 
with those of their associates induces discourage- 
ment and despondency. The inability to sustain 
themselves in the position assigned them by their 
instructors, and the failure to meet the expecta- 
tions of their teachers and friends, paralyze their 
ambition and relax their exertions, and serious 
injustice is done to their real acquirements^ and 
merits. They feel that in their proper position 
they could have accomplished all that was re- 
quired of them ; that although deficient in those 
acquisitions for which their companions have 
been awarded the prize of excellence, their de- 
ficiency was attributable to no lack of industry 
or of effort on their part, but to an original in- 



66 First Principles of Popular Education. 

equality of attainment or of endowment which, 
while it may have retarded their progress, and 
placed them in a false position with reference to 
their associates, in reality afforded no true stand- 
ard of their merit — no criterion of their advance- 
ment. Or, it may happen, that in some other de- 
partment of science or branch of study, more con- 
genial to their taste or better adapted to their 
peculiar powers and faculties, they would have 
taken their station in the front ranks of excel- 
lence and superiority. It should, therefore, be 
the aim of the teacher thoroughly to acquaint 
himself, at the earliest practicable period, with 
the peculiar tendencies, powers, and capacities 
of each individual mind subjected to his disci- 
pline, and so to arrange his classes as to afford 
each a full and fair opportunity for the just and 
equal development of its faculties. The pupil, 
who in one branch may be deemed adequate to 
compete with the most advanced minds of an 
advanced class, in another may find his level in 
the lowest, and in others still occupy a suitable 
and advantageous position in some of the various 
intermediate grades. 

Great care should be taken to bring the chief 
burden of instruction to bear upon those branch- 
es of learning in which the pupil is most defi- 



Systems of Instruction, 67 

cient, and for whicli he exhibits the least aptitude 
or inclination. In those departments to which 
his taste and genius most strongly direct him, 
he will require but a slight and occasional stimu- 
lus. Nothing is more fatal to all true progress 
than that prevailing system of hot-hed cultivation^ 
which, for purposes of ostentation and display, 
concentrates all its energies upon those powers 
in which the pupil manifests precocious and ex- 
traordinary endowments, to the utter or compara- 
tive neglect of others equally essential to his suc- 
cess in life, and to the harmonious structure of 
his character. Premature and excessive manifes- 
tations of peculiar faculties, instead of being thus 
encouraged and stimulated, should rather be re- 
pressed, and at all events counteracted in their 
morbid development by the most diligent culture 
of other powers. The brilliant triumphs of early 
and extraordinary genius, restricted to its own 
peculiar sphere, and excited by injudicious ap- 
plause and unrepressed admiration, are but too 
frequently the precursors of lasting bitterness 
and disappointment. All history and experience 
demonstrate their danger, and lift up a solemn 
voice of warning against their fatal and disas- 
trous tendency. Genius, in whatever form of 
honorable and laudable ambition it may be man- 



68 First Principles of Popular Education, 

ifested, is a glorious and a divine gift — a gift 
whicli should be cherislied, cultivated, and ap- 
plied to the highest and noblest purposes of life. 
But it should neither be idolized nor perverted 
from its true mission by the neglect of other fac- 
ulties essential to its growth and indispensable 
to its healthy development. Let it never be for- 
gotten that where much is given, there much will 
be required — that the individual upon whom 
has been conferred the noblest intellectual power, 
holds it in trust for the human race, and is re- 
sponsible for its faithful exercise to his Creator 
and to his fellow-men ; that he can not with im- 
punity w^aste his talent, or neglect its proper cul- 
tivation ; and that while he sounds the deepest 
and highest notes of eloquence or of poetry, or 
pours forth the inexhaustible stores of metaphys- 
ical lore, or solves the profoundest problems of 
mathematical science, or executes the most skill- 
ful combination of art, he may not trample upon 
the obligations of our common humanity — he 
may not disregard the duties incumbent upon 
him as a man and a Christian — he may not de- 
mand an exemption from those practical claims 
which society requires — and he may not use those 
god-like powers which elevate him above the 
mass of his brethren to their injury or degrada- 



Systems of Instruction, 69 

tion. An equable cultivation of all tlie intellect- 
ual and moral faculties to sucli an extent as to 
secure tlie ready and effective use of eacL, tlie en- 
tire command and control of all, and that just 
balance wMcli prevents the undue ascendancy or 
usurpation of any — constitutes the only true the- 
ory of education in its application not only to 
the ordinary class of minds, but especially to 
those of more ethereal mould — the children of 
genius and the heirs of fame. 

Instruction should be communicated, as far 
as possible, suggestively^ instead of dogmatically. 
The pupil should be aided no farther than is ab- 
solutely requisite to enable him to obtain the 
necessary insight into the subject-matter of his 
inquiries. He should be thrown upon his own 
resources, and prompted only when they fail him. 
Principles should be early and assiduously incul- 
cated, and thoroughly illustrated and applied • 
and then the pupil should be left to carry them 
out in all their details, and to extend their appli- 
cation as widely as he may desire. No substan- 
tial or useful progress can be made where this 
process is reversed — where the various operations 
of science are mechanically performed with no 
just conception of the principles involved — where 
the pupil gives himself up to the dictation of 



70 First Principles of Popular Education, 

the teaclier or of the text-book, and is content 
with the ability, parrot-like, to repeat the instruc- 
tions of the former, and reproduce the lesson of 
the latter. The mind must put forth its own 
powers, plume its own wings, and soar upon 
the strength of its own pinions if it would ascend 
to those clear regions of knowledge and power 
which extend far beyond the mists and exhala- 
tions of error and ignorance. What the age in 
which we live most imperatively requires is men 
and women of earnest, comprehensive, clear minds 
— unfettered by prejudice, bigotry, and delusion 
— prompt to discern the true aspect of things- 
ready to welcome and embrace truth, in whatsoev- 
er guise she may present herself, but eagle-eyed 
in detecting falsehood and sophistry in whatever 
mask arrayed, or under whatever pretense at- 
tempted to be imposed upon mankind ; men and 
women capable of original thinking — of sound 
discrimination — of high and noble views — of 
cultivated intellects and disciplined affections — 
thoroughly familiar with the history of their race 
— appreciating and venerating all that the past 
has transmitted to us worthy of regard and ven- 
eration — condemning no . established institution, 
opinion, or usage because it is old, provided it 
possess the elements of true value, and the genu- 



Systems of Instruction, 



71 



ine stamp of excellence — and tolerating none, 
wlietlier new or old, wliicli can not endure the 
searching ordeal of investigation, and abide the 
severest test of a sound and enlightened reason. 




CHAPTER VII. 

METHODS OF IITTELLEGTUAL CULTUEE. 

THE principal object of public school instruc- 
tion, as has already been remarked, is intel- 
lectual culture. Moral and religious instruction, 
however important and indispensable in the for- 
mation of character, can only be incidentally com- 
municated. The character of the teacher, the in- 
fluences of the school-room — the requisitions or 
order, obedience, quiet and respectful deportment, 
truth, honesty, self control, the faithful perform- 
ance of all prescribed duties — and the religious 
exercises at the opening and closing of the school, 
are the chief agencies by which in these institu- 
tions the moral and religious faculties of the pu- 
pil can be strengthened and matured. The prom- 
inent and special work to be done is the cultiva- 
tion and discipline of the mind — first, by the pos- 
itive communication of the elementary principles 
of knowledge, and then by the development and 
expansion of the faculties of reason, judgment, 



Methods of Intellectual Culture, 73 

and discrimination, by sucli methods as shall 
most certainly and effectually conduce to the in- 
vestigation and attainment of truth in any and 
every department of inquiry. 

The mathematical sciences — those which treat 
exclusively of the relations, combinations and re- 
sults of number and magnitude — such as arithme- 
tic, algebra and geometry, admit of the attain- 
ment of absolute certainty, by a series of opera- 
tions, starting from self-evident axioms and propo- 
sitions and terminating in positive and incontro- 
vertible conclusions; and whatever reasoning or 
demonstrations are based upon these sciences, 
have the stamp of indubitable truth, and are uni- 
versally admitted. No one thinks for a moment 
of questioning the theory or the fundamental laws 
of gravitation discovered by l^ewton through the 
agency and upon the basis of rigid mathematical 
demonstration. No one disputes the laws which 
Kepler has announced as governing the move- 
ments and regulating the distances of the planet- 
ary orbits. No one controverts any of the great 
discoveries of Copernicus, Gralileo, Tycho Brahe, 
the Herschels, Eosse or Le Verrier — for the simple 
reason that all these discoveries were based upon 
the most rigid mathematical demonstration ap- 
plied to facts thoroughly and accurately observed. 

D 



74 First Prmciples of Popular Education. 

Tlie same facts and observations are open to all, 
and tlie demonstrations may Le verified by alL 
The results have, consequently, passed into the 
domain of ascertained and settled truths, and re- 
main forever as the heritage of all succeeding gen- 
erations. In like manner those scientific discov- 
eries, which, although not founded upon strict 
mathematical demonstration, rest upon sound de- 
ductions from ample and accurate observation, 
and which may also be at any time verified by 
similar observation and experiment, such as those 
which form the staple of all the natural sciences, 
have been elevated into the clear region of abso- 
lute and unquestionable truth — admitting indeed 
of farther expansion and more extended applica- 
tion, as additional discoveries resting upon the 
same basis are from time to time made, but de- 
fying contradiction or scepticism as to the re- 
sults actually obtained or the laws or principles 
involved in those results. The mechanical laws 
and resulting phenomena, the principles of optics 
and their application to vision, the laws of light 
and color — ^bf electricity in its multifarious forms 
and combinations, of steam with all its grand re- 
sults — of magnetism, electro-magnetism and mag- 
netic electricity, with their far-reaching conse- 
quences in spanning the circumference of the globe 



Methods of Intellechcal Culture, 75 



by a chain of electric thouglit — of geology, witli 
its ancient records extending througli countless 
ages before tbe existence of bumanity — tbese, to- 
gether with the grand and marvelous results 
which the telescope and the microscope have 
opened up to us, are unquestioned, undenied and 
undeniable. They are portions of the aggregate 
stock of human knowledge, free and open to all, 
with the indelible stamp of truth and certainty 
permanently affixed to their promulgation and 
diffusion. However we may wonder at their dis- 
closures — however we may be startled by new 
and astounding developments from these and sim- 
ilar ascertained principles and laws, neither the 
laws nor their results admit of question or dis- 
pute. Their verification is within the reach of 
all ; and we unhesitatingly accept them as facts 
upon which we may certainly and uniformly rely. 
There is, however, another class of questions 
which present themselves constantly in the expe- 
rience of every one, demanding our solution and 
requiring our judgment and determination, in or- 
der that we may also, if possible, place the results 
in the category of ascertained knowledge. These 
questions do not admit of mathematical demon- 
stration, nor can they in the great majority of in- 
stances be referred to settled scientific principles 



76 First Principles of Popular Education, 

for their determination. The manner in whicK 
we dispose of them, and the conclusions to which 
we arrive, may and frequently do affect to a very 
important extent our conduct, our principles, our 
character, and the general current and results of 
our lives, and exert a powerful influence upon our 
happiness and well-being. Nay, more — they may 
and frequently do seriously affect the condition 
of communities, the progress of civilization, and 
the fortunes of the human race. They may relate 
to the passing events of every-day life, or to the 
more grave and serious problems of Christianity, 
philosophy, political and social economy, civil 
government, and civil and religious institutions of 
every grade. They may involve personal and 
private interests, or the great issues of peace or 
war, liberty or slavery, free trade or commercial 
restrictions, free institutions or governments want- 
ing the essential elements of freedom. In short, 
they may have only an individual bearing, or they 
may affect us seriously in our relations to our fel- 
low-men, to the community in which we live, to 
our country, to the world at large, and to our 
Creator. Now in order to solve these various 
questions, and to ascertain the results with as near 
an approximation to absolute truth as is possible 
in a class of cases where positive certainty is un- 



Methods of hitellectual Culture, "jj 



attainable, it is conceived to be only necessary 
to apply tlie same metJiod of procedure as in pure- 
ly scientific investigations. To do this, however, 
we must train our minds by a rigid and severe 
process of inductive and deductive reasoning to 
tlie thorougli analysis of tbe problem before us, 
whatever may be its nature ; we must accurately 
observe and carefully note every fact and every 
principle having any, the remotest, bearing upon 
it, giving to each its due weight, and no more ; we 
must eliminate, with stern and unflinching severi- 
ty, every element of error, every prejudice, pre- 
conception, or misconception, which may have 
crept into our minds ; and must approach the con- 
sideration of the various questions presented, as 
far as may be possible, with the same coolness, 
and the same indifference to the result, jDrovided 
only the truth be ascertained, which characterize 
the proceedings of the inventor or discoverer in 
the fields of scientific research. All this may be 
exceedingly difficult, and well-nigh impossible, 
especially in the discussion of questions involving 
great principles or paramount interests, individu- 
al, moral or social; and yet it is the only mode 
in which certainty can be attained, and error 
avoided. 

The proper discipline and training of the mind 



78 First Principles of Popular Education. 

in tlie process of intellectual education involves, 
therefore, the necessity of accustoming the pupil, 
first, to the habit of accurate observation. What- 
ever may be the subject-matter under considera- 
tion, whether the solution of a mathematical or 
geometrical problem, the analysis and application 
of any ordinary or extraordinary question of fact 
in the every-day affairs of life, the validity or in- 
validity of any alleged principle or doctrine in 
political or social economy, in statesmanship^ leg- 
islation, literature, or art, clear and accurate ob- 
servation of the actual facts or phenomena is 
indispensable to any valid progress or reliable 
conclusions. This habit may be formed at a very 
early period in the education of the child, and 
should pervade its entire course, from the earliest 
lessons of the primary school to the termination 
of the highest course of instruction. No fact, 
however apparently unimportant, coming under 
consideration or discussion, or presented by the 
text-book, should be permitted to be dismissed 
without thorough and careful analysis — without 
being, if possible, fully comprehended and under- 
stood in its simple aspect as a fact^ independently 
of its particular bearings, or the particular use to 
be made of it. The simple questions at this stage 
of the investigation should be. What is it ? What 



Methods of Intellectual Culture, 79 

are tlie exact phenomena presented \ What are 
tlie facts? These questions being satisfactorily an- 
swered, and duly noted, the induction from the 
facts is appropriate. But the two processes must 
be kept entirely independent of each other. The 
particular fact oh^emyedii^ one thing — i\iQ conclu- 
sion or deduction to be drawn from it, whether 
by itself alone or in conjunction with other ob- 
served facts — essentially another. The existence 
and value of the former has no dependence what- 
ever upon the accuracy or inaccuracy, the sound- 
ness or the unsoundness, of the latter. Each must 
rest upon its own proper basis. Innumerable 
illustrations will readily occur to every reflecting 
mind, of the fallacies and errors resulting from a 
combination of these two processes. Certain ap- 
pearances present themselves with w^hich we 
have been accustomed to connect the idea of cer- 
tain objects or certain consequences. We careful- 
ly observe and note all these appearances, and 
our analysis of all the observed phenomena may 
be strictly accurate. Yet v^e may err in pro- 
nouncing at once upon those appearances that the 
conclusion which immediately suggests itself is the 
true one. In order to do this, it may be necessa- 
ry to subject the facts presented to a variety of 
searching tests, in order to determine, with cer- 



So First Principles of Popular Education, 

tainty^ their connection witli the supposed results, 
and whether they may not really consist with 
other and different conclusions. The facts really 
observed remain unaffected by this additional pro- 
cess — the conclusions are the results of a new and 
additional analysis. Still more familiar illustra- 
tions may be formed in the numerous well-attest- 
ed cases, in courts of justice, of fatally erroneous 
judgments, based on apparently the clearest cir- 
cumstantial evidence. It will readily be per- 
ceived that the important distinction here referred 
to materially affects the value of all human testi- 
mony ; and that in determining upon the credit to 
be given to any narration, the facts actually ob- 
served must be cautiously separated from the in- 
duction, or inferences drawn from and intermin- 
gled with those facts. From inattention to or 
neglect of this essential element of reasoning, in- 
numerable errors have in all ages been perpetuated, 
fatal injustice done to innocent individuals, and 
the interests of truth and knowledge sacrificed to 
a hasty and an unjustifiable generalization from 
undoubted facts to illegitimate and wrong conclu- 
sions. 

In the intellectual process of induction^ as well 
as in that of observation, the mind, in order to 
arrive at exact truth, must be divested of all pas- 



Methods of Intellectual Culture, 



sion, prejudice or bias. It must come to tlie in- 
vestigation of facts and the induction of conse- 
quences or results, witli entire freedom to accept 
the facts as they shall actually be found to exist, 
and the inferences or conclusions as they shall de- 
velop themselves in accordance with the princi- 
ples of sound reasoning. It must have no prefer- 
ences for one description of facts more than for 
another. Truth is simple and indivisible ; as un- 
bending and severe in its relations to questions 
involving the highest interests and welfare of in- 
dividuals and communities as to those which 
relate only to mathematical combinations or scien- 
tific principles. And hence it is, that while in the 
domains of scientific research, dealing with ab- 
stract numbers or lines, and the principles and 
laws of matter and of motion with their applica- 
tions and results, knowledge has advanced with 
such rapid strides as to exceed the most sanguine 
anticipations of the most advanced intellect, while 
in other fields of investigation, where the feelings, 
the passions, the prejudices, or the interests of 
individuals are in any manner affected, the estab- 
lishment and settlement of great principles of 
morals, legislation, society and government can 
only be accomplished after centuries of contro- 
versy, error and wrong. "While the magnificent 

D2 



82 First Principles of Popular Education, 



discoveries in astronomical science liave enabled 
■QS to gaze upon tlie marvelous harmonies of infi- 
nite space, and to calculate the distances and 
analyze the movement and constituent elements 
of constellations, of suns so far removed from the 
utmost boundaries of our own system that light, 
with its immense velocity of nearly two hundred 
thousand miles a second, requires hundreds of 
years to span the interval — while the patient re- 
searches of the geologist has enabled us to trace 
the history of our own planet, through the in- 
effaceable records of the rocks, over a period ex- 
tending through the lapse of incalculable ages — 
and the indomitable energy and perseverance of 
the devotees of mechanical science have brought 
the very elements into subserviency to the will 
and the wants of humanity — w^hile all these grand 
and sublime results have been achieved by the in- 
tellect of the race, acting in strict accordance with 
the laws of thought, how is it with those great 
questions which underlie the happiness and pros- 
perity of individuals, nations, and humanity at 
large, and which have been agitated and discussed 
from the earliest dawn of civilization, through all 
the intervening years of suffering, tumult and 
hope ? In the earliest annals of the world, the ap- 
peal to brute force, the "trial by battle," the 



Methods of Intellectual Ctilt^rc. ^T) 

decision by the sword, served to settle all contro- 
versy ; and still tlie fertile plains of Europe and 
America are drenched with, blood, to accomplisli 
the same end. Then the bonds of slavery were 
riveted on the hapless captives of the sword; and 
slavery has but recently been extinguished by a 
prolonged and desperate struggle, involving in its 
results hecatombs of human lives, and threatening 
the very existence of the government under which 
we live. The fundamental principles of govern- 
ment are yet undergoing discussion — the laws of 
trade, international law, civil and criminal law, 
far from being settled, are constantly subjected to 
important modifications ; nor have any definite or 
satisfactory results been attained in reference to 
the grave question of education, and the relation 
which exists between the social and domestic in- 
stitutions of every civilized community, and the 
intelligence and happiness of the individuals who 
are brought within their pale. Governments and 
political economists are still widely divided in 
opinion as to the expediency and wisdom of free 
trade or commercial restrictions, and if restrictions 
must exist, whether the interests of individuals 
and associations, or the financial arrangements of 
governments shall primarily or chiefly be consult- 
ed. Legislators and philanthropists have failed to 



84 First Principles of Popular Education, 

determine whether the infliction of the penalty of 
death is imperatively demanded for the commis- 
sion of even the highest crimes known to the law. 
The right of every child to such an education as 
shall enable him to comprehend and properly to 
discharge every duty incumbent upon him, as a 
future citizen and member of society, and the re- 
ciprocal obligation of communities and states to 
furnish such an education, are as yet practically 
acknowledged to a very limited extent only, 
either in Europe or America. Innumerable ques- 
tions of minor importance, but affecting exten- 
sively the conduct, character and well-being of 
the race, are still agitated and discussed, with 
but a remote prospect of definitive determination. 
The relations between crime in its various grades, 
its prevention and punishment, and the reform 
and restitution to society of its perpetrators ; the 
important problem of pauperism — of the means 
for its prevention and alleviation, wholly or in 
part; in short, all the various problems of soci- 
ety, government, legislation, ethics, political econ- 
omy and morals, which during the past three 
centuries have occupied the minds of mankind, 
— each and all are legitimately within the prov- 
ince of the intellectual faculties, and each and all 
admit of a definite and clear solution, provided 



Methods of Intellectual Culture, 85 

only tlie same metliod and processes of induction, 
deduction and reasoning which govern the rea- 
sonings, inferences and conclusions of scientific 
men in matters pertaining to the physical rela- 
tions of the universe, are faithfully applied. 

It is not because there is any intrinsic or in- 
superable difficulty in the collection, observation 
and analysis of facts or phenomena in the class of 
cases under consideration — nor because there is 
any invincible obstacle to their comparison and 
generalization or to the inferences and deductions 
to be drawn from them by a clear and sound pro- 
cess of reasoning — that they have not yet been 
brought within the domain of ascertained knowl- 
edge, and placed upon the broad foundation of 
truth and certainty. It is because, and only be- 
cause a dense and powerful element of error, in 
the guise of interest, ignorance, prejudice, precon- 
ception or passion, in some or all of their numer- 
ous forms, has distorted and perverted the facts, 
clouded the reasoning and falsified the conclusion. 
The scales of observation and induction, which 
should have been so accurately constructed and so 
nicely poised as to represent the exact ^ value of 
each fact, and the weight of each inference " even 
to the 9*voirdupois of a single hair,'' have con- 
sciously or unconsciously been heavily burdened 



86 First Principles of Popular Education. 

witli incongruous ingredients, and tampered with 
by malign influences; and tlie result is utterly 
untrustworthy. When Harvey announced to the 
world his great discovery of the circulation of the 
blood, an entire generation was destined to pass 
before the disappearance of these discordant ele- 
ments permitted the full admission and undoubt- 
ing reception of this important truth ; and yet, 
during this whole period, the facts upon which it 
was based, and the legitimate and necessary infer- 
ences from those facts, were as open to the obser- 
vation and reasoning of every cultivated mind as 
to that of the illustrious discoverer. It was al- 
ways true and susceptible of the most rigid 
demonstration, that the planets revolved in a 
fixed and definite orbit around the sun as their 
common centre; and yet the prevalence of igno- 
rance, error and prejudice prevented for more 
than three thousand years the universal recogni- 
tion of that great central fact of astronomical sci- 
ence. In like manner all conceivable problems 
in morality, ethics, legislation, government, polit- 
ical or social economy, intellectual or moral phi- 
losophy, have and can possibly have but one true 
solution ; and the materials for that solution are 
accessible to every enlightened and properly dis- 
ciplined mind. Truth is one and indivisible— 



Methods of Intellectual Culture, 2>'j 

the same yesterday, to-day and forever — and its 
mountain summits tower far above and beyond 
the region where the dark clouds of passion, j)rej- 
udice and error intercept or distort the bright 
radiance of its beams. 

The great end then to be kept in view in in- 
tellectual education should be, the systematic 
development of the faculty of strict logical reason- 
ing from accurately ascertained premises — the 
careful elimination, either in the investigation of 
facts or the inductions or inferences drawn from 
them, of every element of prejudice, passion, or in- 
terest—and the attainment of the power to arrive 
by these means to the utmost possible approxi- 
mation to absolute truth, of which the nature of 
the problem under consideration, whatever it may 
be, will admit. There may be and are questions 
in which perfect certainty is unattainable — ques- 
tions, the complete solution of which transcends 
and must ever transcend our unassisted human 
faculties. These problems pertain to a higher re- 
gion of being — a higher province of thought and 
action. The mental powers bestowed upon us 
liere, however capacious they may be or may be- 
come in their highest development and culture, 
have yet their boundary, beyond which they are 
incapable of passing. Within those boundaries 



88 First Principles of Popular Education, 



however they may be enabled, by severe discipline 
and thorough cultivation, to attain to positive 
knowledge, scientific, ethical or practical, where 
all the facts or phenomena on which their decision 
depends, are accessible. 

Correctness and accuracy of observation, care- 
ful discrimination of difference, comparison, in- 
duction and generalization, may therefore and 
should form an indispensable part of all school 
instruction. Beginning in the primary depart- 
ments with the most familiar and well-known 
objects — the furniture in the school -room, the 
forms, dimensions, structure, color, uses, and ob- 
jects of the various articles submitted to inspec- 
tion — passing on to pictorial representations of 
animals, minerals, and vegetables, trees, fruits, 
flowers, etc., with the originals of which the pu- 
pils are more or less acquainted, subjecting these 
to the same process of analysis, description and 
induction — and gradually extending the course 
to embrace every thing of interest and impor- 
tance within the range of the awakened faculties 
of the young learner — it is easy to perceive that a 
most valuable foundation may in this way be laid 
by faithful and competent teachers for future ef- 
forts of observation, reason and judgment. Keep- 
ing these principles and methods of teaching 



Methods of Lttellectual Culture, 89 

steadily in view throughout the entire course of 
instruction, let every sentence that is read in the 
text-book be thoroughly comprehended and un- 
derstood, every lesson completely mastered, and 
every process of reasoning, demonstration, induc- 
tion or inference accurately followed, and no ad- 
vancement permitted until every previous step 
has been firmly planted. Let the teacher see 
that every false and erroneous conception is care- 
fully corrected — every fallacy detected and set 
aside — every conscious or unconscious element of 
prejudice, preconception, feeling or passion elim- 
inated — and every energy and faculty wholly di- 
rected to the ascertainment of truth — and to the 
attainment of sound and accurate knowledge. 

This process must at first, and perhaps for a 
long time, be slow : its successive steps will re- 
quire great patience, perseverance, and care. Too 
much must not be undertaken at once, and too 
much must not be expected. The results will, 
however, amply repay the expenditure of time 
and labor bestowed. The faculties of the ex- 
panding intellect must on no account and on no 
pretenses be overtasked. Frequent opportunities 
for relaxation and recreation should be afforded, 
and an alternation of studies requiring different 
degrees of attention and different methods of il- 



90 First Principles of Popular Education. 



lustration will be found to afford very sensible re- 
lief. The mind requires rest after continued ten- 
sion for a longer or shorter period no less tlian 
the body; and change or variety of occu]3ation 
not unfrequently produces as salutary an effect 
in both as entire repose or inaction. In the case 
of great activity of the mental faculties, such an 
alternation, judiciously arranged, exerts even a far 
more beneficial tendency than entire inaction or 
mere recreation. Every well-constituted mind re- 
quires constant exercise, in some direction, of its 
various faculties, and although the long -contin- 
ued exertion of its energies upon any one subject 
of thought, reading or study produces weariness 
and fatigue, yet the experience of every student 
demonstrates that the temporary abandonment 
of that subject and the substitution of some oth- 
er, demanding or permitting a new and different 
channel of mental effort, will restore the equilib- 
rium, and supply the necessary relaxation of the 
faculties which have been tasked to their utmost 
capacity. In any case, pure mental idleness — 
utter vacuity or indolence of mind — should never 
be encouraged or tolerated. A systematic and 
judicious course of study should be marked out, 
so arranged as to occupy all the portion of the 
day not devoted to other pursuits, including 



Methods of IntellectMal Culture, 9 1 



physical exercise and relaxation, and so distribu- 
ted as to afford, at intervals of not exceeding one 
hour, such an alternation of studies and literary 
pursuits as will effectually preclude mental fa- 
tigue, and secure a vigorous and wholesome ten- 
sion. The early morning hours should be con- 
secrated as far as practicable to the more abstruse 
and difficult studies — those which require a great- 
er concentration of the mental energies — while 
the residue of the day may be profitably devoted 
to those departments of literature which make 
less demand upon the higher faculties of thought. 
All serious intellectual exertion should be laid 
aside for at least one hour before retiring to rest, 
to afford nature uninterrupted opportunity for 
that complete renewal of the exhausted mental 
and bodily functions which is equally indispensa- 
ble to physical health and mental well-being. 

Thus by the mutual co-operation of the par- 
ent, teacher and pupil, guided by a carefully- 
considered and well-matured system, and keeping 
constantly in view the whole complex nature of 
the being, all whose faculties — physical, intellect- 
ual, moral and social — are to be developed, disci- 
plined and directed, the great work of Educa- 
tion^ may be satisfactorily accomplished, and the 
spring-time of life, while in no respect deprived 



92 First Principles of Popular Education. 



of its exuberant sources of happiness and enjoy- 
ment, consecrated to its legitimate task of prepa- 
ration for a bountiful and abundant harvest of 
usefulness, honor and fame. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

MOEAL AliTD EELIGIOUS IT^STEUCTIOT?-. 

IT has been made a serious and important ques- 
tion in what manner and to what extent mor- 
al and religious instruction can be communicated 
in our public schools. On the one hand it has 
been contended that the chief if not the sole^ ob- 
ject of these institutions is purely secular instruc- 
tion — that the inculcation of morality, except so 
far as it is involved in the ordinary and necessa- 
ry discipline of the school, or comes up incident- 
ally in the prescribed course of instruction, is not 
within the range of the duties committed to the 
teacher; that the fundamental truths of Chris- 
tianity are so diversely held and interpreted by 
different individuals and religious sects, that it is 
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to illus- 
trate and enforce them free from sectarian bias ; 
and that, therefore, the whole domain of moral 
and religious instruction properly appertains to 
the family and to the Church, where the peculiar 



94 First Principles of Popular Education, 

views and doctrines of each parent can be dis- 
tinctively and fully taught. 

On the other hand it is alleged that the very 
idea and the essential object of education consists 
in the development and cultivation of every fac- 
ulty of the human mind ; that to confine its 
office exclusively or chiefly to the mere communi- 
cation of secular knowledge and the discipline of 
the intellectual powers, is unjustifiably and in- 
juriously to restrict its appropriate province ; 
that the early, continued and judicious culture 
of the moral and religious faculties of our nature 
is of vital importance, and indispensable to the 
foundation of a good character and the attain- 
ment of our happiness and well-being here *and 
hereafter ; that to leave out of view this essential 
element in any course of instruction designed to 
exert an important and controlling bearing upon 
the whole of future life, is inevitably to give a 
wrong and distorted direction to the mind, while 
it fatally injures the moral nature ; that the 
teacher to whom is confided the education of the 
young stands in this respect in the place of the 
parent, in regard as well to moral and religious 
instruction as to intellectual culture, and while 
he has no right to interfere with the conscien- 
tious convictions or peculiar religious belief of 



Moral and Religious Instruction, 95 

such parent, or to instill into tlie minds of Ms pu- 
pils any denominational or sectarian views, it is 
his duty to inculcate those great fundamental 
principles of Christianity in which good men of 
every denomination concur, and which admit of 
no dispute or diversity of opinion ; that without 
alluding to those controverted topics, which have 
in all ages divided the religious world, the teach- 
er may find ample scope in the Christian Script- 
ures for the illustration and enforcement of all 
those truths which lie at the foundation of Chris- 
tian morality, and that no education is worthy 
of the name which does not aim at fthe elevation 
and improvement of the moral and spiritual as 
well as the intellectual beinec, or does not cul- 
tivate, refine and purify the affections and the 
heart at the same time that it informs and 
strengthens the mind. 

Fully concurring in these views, and profound- 
ly sensible of the importance^ of moral culture, 
based on the sound foundation of Christian civ- 
ilization, in all our systems of popular education 
and public instruction, I deem it incumbent on 
me to present some practical suggestions in refer- 
ence to the order and method in which this cul- 
ture may best and most effectually be communi- 
cated. 



96 First Principles of Popular Education, 



The first indispensable ingredient in this great 
work is the character and deportment of the 
teacher. The influence of example on the minds 
and hearts of the young is boundless and incalcu- 
lable. The child who in the domestic circle is 
permitted to see and hear nothing but wretched- 
ness and strife and anger and harsh revilings, in- 
sensibly imbibes evil principles, and becomes as- 
similated to the moral atmosphere by which it is 
constantly surrounded. On the other hand, the 
inmate of a happy home, where mutual affection, 
sympathy and love abound — where the eye, from 
earliest infancy, rests only upon spectacles of 
physical and moral beauty, and the ear is greeted 
only by the accents of benevolence and kindness, 
needs no other incitement to pleasurable and 
virtuous activity, and forms no other wish or de- 
sire than to deserve the approbation of those to 
whom it is indebted for so much of happiness 
and enjoyment. Bbth these classes and numerous 
intermediate ones, in every gradation of life and 
character, are, at an early age, transferred for sev- 
eral hours of each successive day to the teacher's 
care. If, therefore, the moral atmosphere of the 
school-room is what it should be — if the teacher 
possesses those attributes which intuitively and 
spontaneously command deference and respect — 



Moral and Religions Instruction. 97 



if firmness and authority be tempered witli mild- 
ness and uniform kindness, and the requisite ca- 
pacity for communicating knowledge be com- 
bined with an invincible patience, rigid imjDartial- 
ity, undiscriminating attention and regard, and 
unwearied perseverance in overcoming the innu- 
merable obstacles to intellectual progress which 
present themselves on every hand, the transition 
from home — whether that home be virtuous or 
vicious — becomes an onward and an upward step 
in the journey of life. 

Order, obedience, and system should demand 
the teacher's earliest and most earnest attention. 
Each pupil, of whatever grade, age or condition, 
should be made to understand, on his first en- 
trance into the school, that unhesitating, unques- 
tioning obedience to its rules, regulations and 
discipline will be rigidly required, and undevi- 
atingly enforced ; that the exercises of the school 
must be conducted with perfect order and uni- 
formity, and that an intelligible and enlightened 
system must, in all things, be adhered to. Noth- 
ing is so fatal to the success or so paralyzing to 
the usefulness of a school, as the absence or gen- 
eral relaxation of discipline. The will of the 
teacher must be paramount — his orders must at 
all hazards be obeyed — order must be preserved, 

E 



98 First Principles of Popular Education, 

or anarcliy, confusion and discord must be the 
inevitable result. The tendency of the age in 
which we live is, it is greatly to be feared, to 
habits of insubordination, irreverence, and disre- 
spect to all established authority, however sacred 
or venerable. The absorbing devotion to the 
pursuit of wealth, honors and station which has 
so strikingly characterized the past half-century, 
especially in our own land and under the influ- 
ence of our free institutions, has sensibly loosened 
those wholesome and salutary restraints of do- 
mestic discipline which are so essential to the 
formation of habits of order and a proper regard 
for the rights and interests of others, and of the 
community to which we belong. A large and 
constantly increasing class of youth is springing 
up in our midst, and exerting a most deleterious 
influence upon the morals of our land, with whom 
nothing is sacred, nothing venerable, nothing 
worthy of deference or respect. Self-emancipated 
from all parental control, long before a solitary 
principle of virtue, or a single habit of order, in- 
dustry or system could be inculcated, these pre- 
cocious representatives of a prurient and new- 
fangled civilization, the rank growth of a poison- 
ous infidelity and an inexcusable idolatry of 
wealth, plunge recklessly into all the excesses 



Moral and Religious Instruction. 99 



and dissipations of tlie metropolis — sound all its 
depths of infamy and licentiousness — spurn all 
control — trample upon every obligation of duty 
— and speedily find their way to the prison, the 
penitentiary, and the gallows. So general and 
potent is this influence, favored as it is by the 
criminal negligence and indifference of parents, 
that even where some degree of restraint is exer- 
cised, and the sanctuary of home is still retained, 
loose principles of action are imbibed, habits of 
indolence, sensuality and sloth induced, irrever- 
ence and disrespect inculcated, and all the graces, 
amenities and sanctities of life abjured and dis- 
carded. And these, and such as these, are the 
youth who, in a few brief years, are to succeed to 
the solemn responsibilities and duties of citizens 
— to give an impulse and a direction to the gov- 
ernment under which we live — to aid in mould- 
ing the civilization of the age, and shaping the 
future destinies of the race ! They throng the 
streets and crowd the avenues through which we 
daily pass to our counting-houses, our offices and 
shops — bold, impudent, noisy, riotous, blasphe- 
mous, and lost to all sense of decency or self-re- 
spect — they congregate in crowds wherever the 
opportunities and materials for low dissipation 
and vicious indulgences are to be found ; and we 



loo First Principles of Popular Education, 

know that from these "baleful nurseries of vice 
and crime the murderer's deadly weapon, the in- 
cendiary's torch, the robber's stealthy devices, the 
pugilist's disgusting and shocking brutality, the 
drunkard's haggard debauchery, the libertine's 
unhallowed orgies, and all those elements of deg- 
radation and of evil which wither and blast hu- 
man society and human intercourse, proceed and 
have their origin ; and yet we pass them by, con- 
tent to know that as yet our own homes are un- 
violated, our own persons safe, our treasures un- 
attacked, our interests unassailed ! Friends of 
education ! teachers, parents. Christians, lovers of 
order, sobriety, and peace — shall this state of 
things be permitted to continue, and to diffuse 
its poisonous and contaminating influence over 
the entire surface of our modern civilization ? or 
shall the youth of our land be gathered as one 
great family into our public schools, and there 
be taught habits of order, principles of obedi 
ence, and reverential respect to established au 
thority, sentiments of virtue, nobility, and a man 
ly ambition for excellence and all those Chris 
tian graces which elevate and adorn the charac- 
ter, and conduce to future greatness and happi- 
ness? 

Earnestness of purpose should also be assidu 



Moral and Religious Instruction, i o i 



ously and practically inculcated upon the ex- 
panding minds of youth. The teacher should 
avail himself of every suitable occasion to im- 
press upon his pupils the importance, necessity 
and utility of that single-minded consecration of 
all their energies to the task before them; that 
concentration of their faculties — that undivided 
attention — that earnestness of effort which alone 
can ensure success. Nothing is more common in 
schools of every grade than lassitude of mind and 
indolence of effort ; that aimless, careless, desulto- 
ry and fitful application to study which pro- 
claims it, manifestly, an irksome and unwelcome 
task instead of a pleasure. This may, indeed, oc- 
casionally be the result of physical causes, de- 
manding a prompt and efficacious physical reme- 
dy, but more frequently has its origin in mental 
indisposition arising from failure to appreciate 
the true nature and object of the exertion re- 
quired. It should be the aim of the teacher to 
supply this stimulus, to inspire in the mind and 
will of the pupil the requisite ambition, and to 
concentrate his energies upon the acquisition 
of whatever purpose he desires to accomplish. 
Whoever is thoroughly in earnest in the pursuit 
of his object, whatever it may be, possesses in 
himself an impulse which has power to overcome 



I02 First Principles of Popular Education, 

mountains of opposition and to annihilate the 
most formidable obstacles. 

Sincerity, conscientiousness, and a strict regard 
to truth, under all circumstances, should be cul- 
tivated and required. In the ordinary inter- 
course of the school-room innumerable occasions 
present themselves for ascertaining the characters 
and dispositions of the pupils in these respects, 
and for testing the strength of their incipient 
principles. These occasions should be prompt- 
ly and skillfully seized ; the wavering virtue of 
the tempted fortified and strengthened — adher- 
ence to the rigid rules of rectitude encouraged 
and sustained — duplicity, tergiversation and false- 
hood sternly but temperately rebuked and uni- 
formly discountenanced, and the whole force of 
that " public opinion," which is as potent and 
efficacious in the school-room as in a more extend- 
ed and advanced field of action and of effort, 
brought to bear upon the pertinacious offender. 
The conscience and the reason should be affec- 
tionately, firmly, and judiciously appealed to ; the 
moral sensibility awakened and excited; the af- 
fections enlisted ; and every accessible ally press- 
ed into the service of truth and virtue against 
the strongest allurements of appetite, inclination 
and passion. Let the teacher never despair of 



Moral and Religious Instruction, 1 03 

reclaiming tlie most obstinate and vicious by per- 
severing and practical appeals to tlie intellectual 
and moral nature. The result may not be speed- 
ily attained, and the process may require the 
most patient and trying continuance of effort, but 
some master -chord of the heart will be found 
sooner or later to respond to the Ithuriel spear 
of affectionate remonstrance, and a human and 
immortal soul be saved, it may be, from destruc- 
tiou, and iTiin. 

One of the most common and injurious errors 
in the discipline of youth consists in the vain at- 
tempt to suppress the activity of those energies 
and passions, the ordinary manifestations of 
which are indicative of an evil and vicious tend- 
ency. The almost invariable effort of this in- 
judicious training is to strengthen and confirm 
the inclination we desire to subdue, even though 
we succeed in repressing its outward action. 
Each passion and faculty of our nature has its 
appropriate field of exertion, and each instinctive- 
ly demands its proper gratification. It is our 
duty as parents and teachers to recognize this 
fundamental principle of humanity, and while 
we discountenance and check every excessive or 
improper manifestation of any mental or moral 
power, we should divert its activity and direct 



1 04 First Principles of Popular Education, 



its energies into safe and legitimate claannels. 
The observation or neglect of this principle in- 
volves consequences in the future of most mo- 
mentous import to the happiness and well-being 
of the child. The same powers, propensities and 
passions which, properly and judiciously directed 
and applied, constitute the ardent and effective 
reformer, the sagacious and discriminating states- 
man, the astute diplomatist, the energetic and en- 
terprising man of business, the bold, fearless and 
indomitable patriot, may be converted through 
unrestrained indulgence or unwise repression and 
constraint into those fatal and destructive ele- 
ments of vice and crime whicli signalize the un- 
principled career of the reckless violator of his 
country's laws, and the abandoned victim of de- 
pravity and guilt. The exuberant impulses of 
an active, ardent, restless spirit, in the unthink- 
ing, uncalculating impetuosity of its youthful and 
inexperienced energies, are but too often mistaken 
for the deliberate promptings of lawless will and 
vicious inclination ; and many a noble mind and 
generous heart, capable of the most exalted ex- 
cellence, has been fatally and irreclaimably per- 
verted and ruined for want of a discriminating 
appreciation of those true and genuine tendencies 
which only needed proper indulgence and direc- 



Moral and Religious Instruction, 1 05 

tion to ripen into useful, honorable and noble ex- 
ertion. Let it never be forgotten tliat the ele- 
ments of goodness, virtue and excellence are im- 
planted by the Creator in every human spirit; 
and that it is the special and peculiar function of 
the teacher to discover, to develop, and to culti- 
vate and direct these precious germs, however 
deeply encrusted in ignorance, overlaid by pas- 
sion, or surrounded by thick and tangled weeds 
of vice. Deep in the breast of the most incor- 
rigible and depraved there are yet fountains of 
living waters, accessible, it may be, only to the 
profoundest observation and most skillful re- 
search, but of power to renovate, to cleanse, puri- 
fy and invigorate the whole moral being. 

Deference and regard to the wants and con- 
venience of others, self-denial and uniform good 
temper in all their intercourse with their asso- 
ciates should be made to characterize the deport- 
ment of the pupils of every school-room. By in- 
sisting upon this as a rule admitting of no excep- 
tions, teachers will essentially promote quietness 
and order, while at the same time they will be 
laying the foundations of an elevated, noble and 
disinterested character to those committed to their 
charge. Of all the traits which serve to harden 
the heart and debase the affections in after life, 

E2 



1 06 First Principles of Popular Education, 

selfishness is at once tlie most common and most 
fatal. Developing itself as it does at tlie earliest 
dawn of consciousness, it is too frequently stimu- 
lated into excessive and inordinate action by the 
injudicious fondness and partiality of parents — 
and gaining strength with years, it soon comes to 
exercise a powerful and most deleterious influence 
upon the character and habits. The wants and 
claims of others are unfelt and disregarded ; the 
channels of sympathy and mutual regard are ef 
fectually closed up ; the engrossing demands of 
self-interest, personal convenience and individual 
gratification take precedence of every considera- 
tion of justice, generosity and kindness ; and the 
worst passions of our nature are enlisted in sup- 
port of these inordinate and extravagant preten- 
sions. Society in all its departments — all our 
civil and social institutions, from the highest to 
the lowest, bear the impress of this all-prevailing 
evil. Christianity for eighteen centuries has pro- 
tested against it in vain. The earliest lessons of 
childhood — the force of example — the incentives 
of passion — the love of dominion, and the pleas- 
ure of self-indulgence — ^have proved too powerful 
for the mild teachings of religion and philosophy; 
and one generation after another has transmitted 
its annals of wars, desolation, and conquest — of 



Moral and Religious Instruction, 107 

violence and blood — of strife, tumnlt, and confu- 
sion — all originating in selfisliness, personal am- 
bition, pride and passion, and perpetuated b}^ 
that prevailing disregard for tlie interests and 
feelings of otliers, whicli seems in a measure 
forced upon us by tlie overwhelming pressure of 
the vast and complicated machinery of modern 
civilization. It is in our power, aided by the 
blessing of Heaven, essentially to mitigate, if we 
can not hope ultimately to remove, this calam- 
itous evil, by early and constantly impressing 
upon the minds of each pupil committed to our 
charge the spirit of that divine precept of Chris- 
tianity, " Whatsoever ye would that others should 
do to you, do ye even so to them" — by such a 
discipline of the intellect and of the heart as shall 
accustom each to prefer the interests and wants 
of others to his own — to overlook self in the ear- 
nest desire to be useful — to repress and subdue, 
in their earliest manifestations, the angry and 
vindictive passions — to cultivate and cherish hab- 
its of beneficence and benevolence — noble and 
generous impulses — lofty and disinterested traits 
of character — and to aspire to that excellence 
which, regardless of self, except so far as the wel- 
fare of others is concerned, places all its happiness 
and all its enjoyment in the ability to confer 



io8 First Principles of Popular Education, 



blessings upon all who come within the circle of 
its influence and its power. To this end, the ex- 
ample of the great and the good, which ancient 
and modern history afford, should be carefully 
cultivated, and frequently and earnestly dwelt 
uj^on. No opportunity should be lost on the 
part of the teacher of manifesting the importance 
and the beauty of this principle by such practical 
illustrations as the administration and discipline 
of the school-room and the passing events of the 
day may afford. That demeanor and deportment 
which the conventional rules of the best society 
require in the intercourse of refined life, and 
which is too often but the false and hollow sub- 
stitute for the genuine feelings of the heart — too 
often worn as the mask and " counterfeit present- 
ment " of virtue and goodness — should be render- 
ed the natural and genuine manifestation of the 
character — the graceful and legitimate exponent 
of the dispositions and the affections. 

I deem it unnecessary on the present occasion 
to go more into detail on these topics. In the 
various suggestions I have here thrown out, I am 
by no means unaware of the numerous and for- 
midable difficulties which teachers will encounter 
in the endeavor to reduce them to practical ef- 
fect. I am aware that they are required to deal 



Moral and Religious Instruction, 109 

with every variety of character and disposition ; 
that innumerable obstacles are thrown in their 
path by the counteracting discipline of the family 
and the street ; by the want of judgment, the 
want of time and attention of parents ; by the 
force of long-cherished habits of indolence and 
vicious indulgences ; and above all by the limited 
opportunities of systematic culture, which a due 
regard to other departments of duty leaves at 
their disposal. I am also fully aware that it is 
far easier to lay down general principles and 
rules than to carry them into practical effect. 
But it has occurred to me that even under all 
these embarrassments and obstructions the en- 
lightened and faithful teacher may do much in 
educating and training the moral affections in 
those intervals of intellectual instruction which 
so frequently recur — that this instruction may it- 
self be profitably interspersed with those precepts 
and practices which, judiciously and earnestly ap- 
plied, may sink deep into the heart, and yield 
sooner or later an abundant and grateful harvest 
— and that in selecting the mode and the time 
for conveying these practical lessons of Christian 
morality, the judgment of each individual teacher 
may be put in requisition. I am mainly solicit- 
ous that whatever degree of mental improvement 



no First Principles of Popular Education, 

our youtli receive in tliese elementary institutions 
of instruction should be based upon sound prin- 
ciples of moral culture — tliat the head and the 
heart, the intellect and the affections, the under- 
standing and the will should be educated togeth- 
er in harmonious accordance with the demands 
of the entire nature. How this most desirable 
result may best be attained under the varying 
circumstances of each individual case, must be 
left in a great measure to the judgment and dis- 
cretion of the teacher. Enviable, indeed, will be 
the feelings, and great the reward of that instruct- 
or, who, in looking back upon the long years of 
ill-requited toil and earnest effort in this noble 
profession, shall be able to trace to the lessons of 
the school-room the germs of future greatness, dis- 
tinction and fame in the career of those minds 
destined to exert a lasting and a benefici-al influ- 
ence upon the human race — who, when some fu- 
ture Washington shall rise as the savior, deliver- 
er, and lawgiver of his country — some future 
Hamilton, Jay or Clinton as its honored states- 
man — some Wilberforce or Howard as its philan- 
thropist — some Milton, Shakespeare or Spenser 
as its poet — or some Bacon, Newton or Locke as 
its philosopher — shall be able with honest pride 
to point to yonder school, and to say, " It was* 



Moral and Religious Instruction, 1 1 1 



there I first imbued his heart with the true con- 
ceptions of greatness — there the foundations of 
his towering intellect were laid upon the ever- 
lasting rock of Christian morality ! There, under 
my teachings, the great ideas of human destiny 
and responsibility — the august vision of immor- 
tality — the noble ambition to live worthily and 
justly and usefully — to achieve eminence and dis- 
tinction — to hand down to posterity an unsullied 
name and a cherished memory — first dawned 
upon his mental vision ; and there, under my 
guidance, ripened, matured and expanded from 
day to day and year to year, until he went forth 
to the harvest-field of his greatness and his fame !" 
Earth has no nobler or higher triumph than this ; 
and they who are thus instrumental in the hum- 
blest degree in leading "many to righteousness, 
shall shine like stars in the firmament for ever and 
ever !" 




CHAPTER IX. 



PEACTICAL EDUCATIOlSr. 



IT is one of tlie most gratifying indications of 
the progress and advancemei^^ of tLe age in 
which we live that the public attention and re- 
gard is beginning to be more earnestly directed 
than it ever heretofore has been to the education 
of the people ; that plans and systems of instruc- 
tion, and principles of intellectual and moral cul- 
ture are attracting more and more the public in- 
terest and attention ; and that the press, the pul. 
pit, and the other numerous organs of public sen- 
timent that pervade our modern civilization, are 
beginning to discuss, wath an animation and an 
energy reflecting the highest credit upon their 
motives, the best and most effectual mode €f 
communicating knowledge to the youth of our 
land. These discussions necessarily partake of 
the spirit of the age, and are imbued to a greater 
or less extent with that peculiar coloring which 



Practical Education. 1 1 3 



emanates from tlie material tendencies of a rapid- 
ly progressive state. 

Public sentiment demands, witli increasing en- 
ergy and emphasis in this our young repuBlic, a 
practical education. In view of the circumstances 
by which we are surrounded — of the antecedents 
of onr position — of the destiny we are required 
to fulfill — of the unprecedented progress of science, 
and the immense development and extension of 
art — it is insisted that public and private in- 
struction should be conformed to the radical rev- 
olution which has thus been effected in the con- 
dition of the world — and should recognize the 
new tendencies of thought and action which have 
been developed by the events of the past hun- 
dred years. To this extent the demand is a rea- 
sonable one, and should undoubtedly be acceded 
to. But it does not stop here. In its excessive 
zeal for the reformation of those antiquated sys- 
tems of instruction which were the growth and 
product of a less enlightened age, and which a 
more general diffusion of knowledge has rendered 
in some respects not only useless but pernicious, 
it applies the axe to the root of the tree, and de- 
mands the complete extirpation of that culture 
which the wisdom of our ancestors, for hundreds 
of generations, has regarded as indispensable to 



1 1 4 First Principles of Popular Education, 

the formation of an elevating and commanding 
character. It finds no elements of beauty or of 
■Qsefulness in those intellectual pursuits which 
have no immediate practical application to the 
every-day wants and requirements of active life. 
It discovers a vast and unbounded field of enter- 
prise and exertion, opened up by modern science, 
the exploration and cultivation of which not 
only require but promise to repay the entire de- 
votion of the mental and physical powers; and 
in all this ample field it finds no room for the 
abstruse researches of metaphysical philosophy, 
the erratic vagaries of the imagination and the 
fancy, the legendary lore of romance, the unre- 
strained flight of genius, the poet's rhapsodies, 
the musician's triumphs or the painter's skill. It 
has neither time to lose, energy to bestow upon, 
or faculties to appreciate the beauties or the sub- 
limities of those old masters at whose consecrated 
shrine the literary world has worshiped for hun- 
dreds of centuries ; nor does it desire to waste 
those precious hours in ideal reveries and im- 
practicable day-dreams of beauty and perfection 
which may far more profitably be devoted to the 
acquisition and the retention of solid, tangible, 
material wealth, influence, power and station. It 
sees all around it the splendid results of worldly 



Practical Education, 



115 



energy and enterprise, the brilliant triumplis of 
ambition, the stately palaces of wealth, the gor- 
geous trappings of power, and it recognizes in 
these the legitimate effects of that concentrated 
devotion to the useful, the attainable, the practi- 
calj which alone can ensure success in the crowd- 
ed arena of modern civilization. 

From this view of practical education I entire- 
ly dissent. I regard it as fatal to all true culture 
of the mind and the heart — destructive of all ex- 
cellence — subversive of all nobility of character 
• — and conducive, inevitably and irresistibly, to 
the gradual but certain decay of every generous 
impulse, every lofty aspiration of our nature. 
The faculties of our wondrous being are manifold 
and various, and in order to the harmonious play 
of the whole great fabric, each must be afforded 
scope for the full display of its powers. This 
world of flesh and sense which we inhabit, with 
all its pursuits, its toils, its aspirations and strug- 
gles and triumphs, can furnish adequate employ- 
ment to a portion only of our capacities ; and it 
is not all, even of life, to live. The attainment of 
wealth, the diffusion of knowledge, the progress 
of science and the arts, fame, station, influence, 
rank and power, are all but means to an ulterior 
and a noble end — the cultivation and proper em- 



1 1 6 First Principles of Popular Education, 

, ^ 

ployment of our rational and immortal nature. 
Whatever studies, occupations or pursuits most 
effectually advance this great end are most judi- 
cious and desirable, v\^lietlier directly and imme- 
diately tending to our prosperity and success in 
the crowded avenues of every -day life or not. 
The lessons of Christianity, of philosophy and of 
experience have fallen upon strangely inattentive 
ears, if they have not taught us that the high 
places of the world, its glittering prizes and its 
loftiest honors, are not uniformly, or even gener- 
ally, the reward so much of goodness, virtue, 
truth, integrity and wisdom, as of qualities with 
which these have but little connection or affinity. 
If to succeed in life be all our aim, if riches and 
honors and rank and station and power and in- 
fluence constitute the El Dorado of our desires — 
the summit of our ambition, these objects may be 
and have not unfrequently been attained by the 
humblest intellect, with a very slight expendi- 
ture of mental cultivation or discipline. 

There is, however, a view of practical educa- 
tion which is obnoxious to none of these objec- 
tions. If it be meant that the youth of our land 
should be instructed in all those branches of 
science and of art which are indispensable to 
their future success in life — that -they should be 



Practical Education, 



117 



invested with tlie full and complete command of 
all their faculties — that they should be enabled 
promptly and skillfully to avail themselves, in 
any emergency, of those energies and powers of 
thought and of action which the crisis, whatever 
it may be, requires — that they should be familiar- 
ly acquainted with the results of past experience, 
and the amount of present knowledge in all those 
departments of scientific inquiry which the varied 
pursuits of life demand — and that they should 
be taught the relative importance and value of 
the different kinds of information and knowledge 
thus communicated — if this be what is meant by 
practical education, its value can scarcely be over- 
estimated. If it be designed only to strike at 
the root of those ancient and exploded systems 
of learning which would sacrifice substantial at- 
tainments to empty show, and waste the precious 
years of youth in the laborious and irksome pur- 
suit of useless and unavailable lore, and to re- 
claim for the careful and thorough investigation 
of the principles and problems of moral science 
a large proportion of that valuable time which 
has heretofore been monopolized by the classics, 
and by abstruse mathematical and metaphysical 
learning, a reform in this direction should be 
greeted and encouraged by the approbation of all 



1 1 8 First Principles of Popular Education, 



reflecting minds. Those conservative influences 
which still cling v^ith unyielding tenacity to rou- 
tines of instruction which have long since lost 
their application to the requirements of the age, 
are pernicious in the extreme. They serve only 
to retard the progress of knowledge, and to cast 
insuperable obstacles in the path of literary and 
scientific advancement. In their inconsiderate 
zeal for the usages and customs of the past, their 
advocates and adherents are in imminent danger 
of losing sight of the present and the future ; and 
in their strenuous efforts to arrest and ^^ the 
rapidly-revolving wheels of modern progress, they 
overlook the perilous hazards of so impracticable 
an enterprise. Nor is it to be regarded as at all 
wonderful that while the constituted guardians 
of Oxford and Cambridge, and other venerable 
and time -hallowed institutions of learning on 
both sides of the Atlantic, pertinaciously insist 
upon the virtual exclusion of all science not 
stamped with the credentials of the Middle Ages, 
the reaction of a more liberal and tolerant princi- 
ple should verge to the opposite extreme. Ac- 
cordingly the real danger, with which we in the 
present utilitarian age are threatened, is the too 
great and all-absorbing devotion of our energies 
to the practical pursuits of life ; the entire subju- 



Practical Education. 119 

gation of the ideal — not to the real^ for this in- 
volves an admission we are not prepared to make 
—but to the material. In our judgment, educa- 
tion should embrace within its cognizance all 
the varied interests and pursuits of humanity, as- 
signing to each its just proportion and influence, 
whether it has reference to the spiritual and im- 
mortal nature, or to the evanescent and perisha- 
ble though not less real or pressing demands of 
time and sense. The imagination and the fancy, 
lawless and uncontrollable as may be their occa- 
sional flights, may yet be regarded as indispensa- 
ble elements of our mental and moral being — 
bridging over, if we may be allowed the expres- 
sion, the unfathomable abyss which separates the 
worlda of matter and of mind — ^the material and 
the spiritual — the seen and the unseen. 

These high faculties of our naturiB must there- 
fore be adequately provided for in every sound 
and well-considered system of education. To re- 
press their manifestation — to deprive them of all 
opportunity of exertion — to clip their beauti- 
ful wings and debar them from that boundless 
empyrean of thought which constitutes their ap- 
propriate element — is essentially injudicious and 
injurious. The ideal, equally with the real, has 
its sphere of action and of enjoyment — a world 



1 20 First Principles of Popular Education, 

of its own — scarcely less real, certainly not less 
important in its uses, than the material. "Who 
shall undertake to limit the influence of those 
grand old masters of poetry and of song whose 
immortal strains have come down to us on the 
stream of time from the earliest ages of antiquity 
— meeting from age to age, in their magnificent 
course, responsive echoes in millions of human 
hearts, and sweeping onward in majestic grand- 
eur to achieve in ages yet to come still nobler 
and ampler triumphs \ Who shall tell how 
many minds have been exalted, purified and en- 
nobled by those eloquent outpourings of genius 
and imagination which the rich stores of modern 
literature have supplied, and which, powerless as 
they may be in the thronged highways and by- 
ways of the world, exert a pervading and com- 
manding influence over the hearts and lives of 
men % Beauty, too, is reflected in the handiwork 
of the Almighty Architect — from the lily of the 
valley to the illimitable expanse of the over- 
hanging universe — scattered in boundless profu- 
sion wherever the eye can penetrate, or the im- 
agination roam, and reproduced in fadeless tints 
on the immortal canvas of the great painters; 
sublimity, hushing every sense in breathless ad- 
miration, as the tremendous cataract dashes and 



Practical Education, 121 



plunges its mighty waters over tlie frowning 
abyss, and filling tlie mind witli solemn awe as 
tlie fitful thunder-gust sweeps over tlie horizon. 
Who shall say these are not elements of powerful 
import in the constitution and culture of the hu- 
man mind % And are these to be overlooked 
and neglected because they enter not into that 
account current of profit and loss which adjusts 
the dealings and regulates the intercourse of the 
practical world \ Are all the nobler impulses of 
our being — the native instincts of immortality — 
the intuitive wanderings of the soul in quest of 
its mysterious destination — its heart-felt recog- 
nition of kindred and congenial elements in the 
good, the beautiful and the true— its sympathy 
with the familiar face of nature in its grandeur 
and its gloom, its majesty and sublimity, its uni- 
versal and harmonious response when " touched 
to finer issues " by the master-hand of genius and 
of art — its thrilling susceptibility to kindness, to 
affection and love — its deep under-tone of sadness 
and lamentation, as the numerous ills of human- 
ity pass in mournful review before it — and its 
restless aspirations after an excellence and a per- 
fection unattainable here — are all these indica- 
tions of a nature infinitely higher, nobler, purer 
than the " beggarly elements of flesh and sense," 

F 



12 2 First Principles of PoptUar Education, 

to be subordinated in our processes of education to 
tlie insatiable demands of a material age, or crusli- 
ed beneath the remorseless wheels of that Jug- 
gernaut of wealth and power which the nations 
in these latter days have set up as the god of 
their idolatry ? 

ISTo! a thousand times no! There is some- 
thing within us which points to a loftier destina- 
tion — a higher ambition than falls within the 
range of the boasted practical philosophy of the 
age in which we live. Our educational systems 
must indeed be reformed and renovated and re- 
constructed ; but they must be elevated and not 
depressed. They must embrace the whole nature 
of man, develop all his faculties, bring into active 
exertion all his energies, and harmoniously adjust 
the balance of his higher and lower impulses. 
They must instruct him in the true value of his 
existence as an immortal being, and not the creat- 
ure of a day or of an age. They must teach 
him that his mission here is one of self-discipline, 
of individual and mutual improvement, of useful- 
ness to his kind, of comprehensive benevolence to 
his race, and not of selfish regard to his own dis- 
tinctive interests, of systematic warfare against his 
fellows, of relentless oppression and cruelty and 
wrong. The eternal and immutable principles 



Practical Education, 123 

of justice, integrity, conscientiousness, reverence 
and regard for tlie rights of others must be incul- 
cated ; the passions trained to uniform subservi- 
ency to the reason and the judgment ; the affec- 
tions disciplined to the comprehensive law of 
love ; the intellect enlightened to the clear per- 
ception and just appreciation of useful knowl- 
edge, and the will directed to the removal of ev- 
ery obstacle to the complete subjugation of evil 
in all its manifestations. Then, when the proud 
oppressor shall be forced to loose his grasp, and 
the chains of his helpless victim shall no longer 
be heard to clank — when violence and cruelty 
and injustice and wrong shall have withdrawn 
from our crowded marts and sought their native 
darkness and obscurity — when fraud and duplici- 
ty and falsehood and deception shall no longer 
stalk about with impunity and applause, and 
vice and infamy no longer rear their unblushing 
fronts in our temples of fashion and amusement 
— when the patriot and the statesman, the de- 
voted philanthropist and the fearless reformer 
shall no longer be vilified, persecuted and con- 
temned, and the high places of the land be no 
longer contaminated and defiled by corruption 
and wickedness and vice — when temperance and 
order and peace and concord and mutual esteem 



124 First Principles of Popular Education. 

and brotherly kindness shall characterize the civ- 
ilization of the age — then will Education have 
worthily fulfilled its high mission ; then, indeed, 
will it have hecoiRe p^^actical. Till then the true 
teacher must labor on in faith and hope, patient- 
ly abiding his time and awaiting the harvest ; 
unweariedly and diligently sowing the seeds of 
knowledge, of goodness and of truth, well-assured 
that all will not fall in stony places, and that a 
portion at least shall in due time " spring up and 
bring forth fruit — some thirty, some sixty, and 
some an hundred fold." 




CHAPTEE X. 

FEMALE EDUCATIOIT. 

THE position whicli woman occupies in our 
modern civilization, and the influence slie ex- 
erts, not only on tlie spirit of tlie age in whicli 
we live but especially and peculiarly on the char- 
acter and conduct of the rising generation, de- 
mand on her behalf the most careful and compre- 
hensive mental and moral culture which our sys- 
tems of education can afford. The time has long 
since gone by — ^never to return — when her facul- 
ties were deemed incompetent to participate in 
that high intellectual discipline which we, the 
self- constituted lords of creation, saw fit to mo- 
nopolize as our own peculiar and inalienable 
heritage. The Somervilles and Herschels and 
Mitchells, Baillies,Edgeworths and De Staels, the 
Hemans, ISTortons, Sigourneys, Kirklands, Childs, 
Mitfords, and numerous other stars of the first 
magnitude in the scientific and literary horizon 
of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, have 



126 First Principles of Popular Education, 

secured for themselves and tlie sex they represent 
equal rank in tlie great constellation of genius 
and talent wMcli adorns and illumines tlie age. 
Institutions of tlie highest grade for female in- 
struction and education have arisen and multi- 
plied themselves in Europe and America, until 
every vestige of that odious and unjustifiable dis- 
tinction to which we have adverted in reference 
to the mental capacity of the sexes has disap- 
peared. Indeed, the scales seem inclining of late 
to the opposite extreme, and pretensions to intel- 
lectual and moral superiority on the part of wom- 
an are gravely put forward and pertinaciously 
maintained. In these latter days of progress and 
advancement we are asked to make way in our 
legislative assemblies and councils of state for 
new and more competent as well as fairer ele- 
ments of political economy, to open our busy 
marts of trade and commerce to the influx of 
these daring adventurers, and even to submit our 
own claims to a share in the administration of 
our civil and social as well as domestic institu- 
tions to the arbitrament by ballot of these insid- 
ious and enterprising rivals. In short — so for- 
midable are the indications of the progress of 
this new power — we of the reigning dynasty, in 
whose hands the sceptre of government has from 



Female Education. 127 

time immemorial been vested, have no other ap- 
parent alternative than at once and uncondition- 
ally to recognize the claims and admit the rights 
of our fair assailants to an equal participation of 
power, stipulating solely on our own behalf that 
it shall only be exercised Mviih. a due and becom- 
ing regard to the amenities and proprieties, the 
usages and customs of the domestic and social 
circle. We would not that our mothers, our sis- 
ters and our wives should so far diverge from 
the congenial and attractive quiet of their happy 
homes as to mingle in the din and turbulence of . 
the hustings or the political assembly-room ; nor 
have we as yet seen any evidence of their desire 
or inclination to do so. We deny the allegations 
to the contrary of those who claim to be their 
representatives in this behalf, and ask for their 
credentials. Is there one among the thousands 
of ladies engaged in our midst in the task of ele- 
mentary instruction who craves the privilege of 
attending the polls on the days of our periodical 
elections, or who is anxious to address her fellow- 
citizens from the stump on the predominant issues 
of the day ? Is there one among the tens and 
hundreds of thousands who preside over, adorn 
and elevate our happy homes and participate in 
their blessings, who would, if she could, enact the 



128 First Principles of Popular Education, 

demagogue or conspicuously figure in our public 
journals as the public orator or declaimer, the 
successful or the unsuccessful candidate for the 
lowest or the highest station in the gift of his or 
Tier majesty, the people ? Is there one who would 
willingly come down from the commanding ele- 
vation of womanly dignity, influence and unques- 
tioned supremacy over the affections and the 
heart, that she might with impunity ascend the 
tribune or be invested with the insignia of leg- 
islative, judicial or executive powers ? Or where 
is the true-souled, true-hearted woman who de- 
sires to be invested with the daily and harass- 
ing cares, vexations and responsibilities of com- 
merce and trade, or to exercise the functions 
appertaining to any of the various professions ? 
These are not the appropriate provinces of the 
sex, and no amount of conventional or other " ag- 
itation," no declamatory harangues in behalf of 
" woman's rights," or elaborate recapitulations of 
'^ woman's wrongs " can render them other than 
repugnant and distasteful. The true theatre of 
female influence and exertion is the domestic and 
social circle. These she is qualified to adorn, 
elevate and improve ; and when she steps beyond 
these, she inevitably loses that attractive charm 
which places her beyond the reach of rivalry or 



Female Education, 129 

competition in her own graceful and peculiar 
sphere. 

While, therefore, we would not exclude woman 
from any field of intellectual or moral labor she 
may desire to occupy — while we would fully and 
unreservedly concede to her an entire equality of 
right with ourselves in all those departments of 
literary, scientific and artistical labor which con- 
duce to the improvement and welfare of our com- 
mon humanity — and while we would throw open 
to her free competition all those avenues of trade 
and business which may be occupied by her con- 
sistently with a proper self-respect and a due re- 
gard to the higher and nobler interests specially 
confided to her guardianship and care — we can 
not sympathize with that masculine enthusiasm, 
now so prevalent in certain quarters, which would 
give us, instead of the elevating and kindly in- 
fluences of the domestic and social circle, an 
Amazonian phalanx, instead of homes lighted up, 
warmed and cheered by loving and beloved faces 
— a theatre of political intrigue and turbulent 
commotion, — ^instead of a sacred, inviolable, cher- 
ished asylum from the corroding cares, anxieties 
and oppressive burdens of the world, a counting- 
room, an office or a shop. We can not but feel 
that such a movement, under whatsoever specious 
F2 



1 30 First Principles of Popular Education, 

pretense it may be impelled, in whatever pliilan- 
tliropic guise it may be clothed, would be a ret- 
rograde step in the world's civilization. We are 
not prepared for so radical and complete a revo- 
lution in all our preconceived ideas of the fitness 
of things. Nor do we entertain the slightest ap- 
prehension of its advent. A nobler and a grander 
destiny has been reserved for the women of the 
nineteenth century, and it is for that destiny we 
would have them educated. 

There is no branch of human know^ledge, no 
department of scientific instruction, no field even 
of professional labor or commercial or mechanical 
pursuits which should be excluded from the pale 
of female education. We would have our daugh- 
ters, our sisters and our wives familiar, so far as 
may be practicable, with the fundamental princi- 
ples of all the sciences and the practical operation 
of all the arts which conduce to human progress 
and advancement. We would have them inti- 
mately conversant with the great masters of po- 
etry, philosophy and literary excellence of ancient 
and modern times ; able to comprehend, appreci- 
ate and explain the profoundest speculations of 
the astronomer, the geologist, the chemist, the po- 
litical economist, the metaphysician and the phi- 
losopher, and to extend, if need be, and push for. 



Female Education, 131 



ward the researches of each into new and hither- 
to unexplored regions of matter or of mind, well 
versed in the history of the past, and competent 
to bring its instructive light to bear upon the 
incidents of the present and the prospects of the 
future, and familiarly acquainted with the consti- 
tutions, laws, institutions and governments of the 
various communities and countries of the world, 
and especially of our own. 

Let it not be said that a course of instruction, 
full and complete like this, will unfit them for the 
discharge of the practical, every-day duties of life. 
All experience and history proves the contrary. 
Was Lady Jane Grey less qualified for usefulness 
in that station of life for which she was born — 
was she less amiable, less devoted to her husband 
and her friends, less capable of great actions and 
noble self sacrifice to her convictions of duty, be- 
cause she read Plato in the original Greek, and 
preferred conversing in solitude with that mighty 
mind to the frivolous amusements of her compan- 
ions ? Was Madame Roland less a heroine, less 
adapted to the difficult circumstances which sur- 
rounded her, less. competent to administer conso- 
lation to her noble but ill-fated husband, and to 
sustain and support his drooping energies amid 
the calamitous scenes of that terrible Revolution, 



12,2 First Principles of Popular Education, 



because of lier splendid abilities and transcendent 
literary and scientific talents? Did Felicia He- 
mans struggle less heroically, devotedly and tri- 
umphantly against desertion, poverty and illness, 
or discharge less faithfully her duty to her help- 
less children because her cultivated intellect en- 
abled her to soar upon the unflagging wings of 
the imagination into the loftiest and purest re- 
gions of poetical beauty and sublimity ? Who 
will accuse Joanna Baillie, Maria Edgeworth, 
Amelia Opie, Mary Kussell Mitford, Mary Som- 
erville, Caroline Herschell, Mary Howitt, or our 
own Hannah Adams, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, 
Lydia Maria Childs, Caroline Matilda Kirkland, 
Miss Sedgewick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and that 
radiant cluster of poetesses who beautify and 
adorn our intellectual galaxy, of inattention to 
the duties and claims of ordinary life % And if 
we are occasionally called upon to lament the 
perverse and erratic wanderings of a Martin eau, 
a TroUope or a Fanny "Wright, or to sympathize 
with the errors, the obliquities, the faults and 
the misfortunes of the Wolstoncrofts, the God- 
wins, the Nortons, and others like them, we 
console ourselves by the reflection that an un- 
favorable combination of circumstances, rather 
than any promptings of the intellect or the heart. 



Female Education, 133 

darkened and obscured tlie path of these gifted 
daughters of genius, and intercepted those rays 
of happiness and enjoyment they were so -vvell 
adapted to attract and to reflect. The want of 
congenial companionship, of a just and generous 
appreciation, of that kindness and affectionate re- 
gard without which the heart refuses to put forth 
its beautiful blossoms of hope and love — and 
above all the presence and pervading influence of 
sordid, base and groveling minds, of degrading 
and repulsive associations, and innumerable ob- 
stacles to the healthful development of the char- 
acter and the intellect — all these sources of bit- 
terness and disappointment are charitably and 
indulgently to be regarded. 

It is undoubtedly true, however, that the 
graces of the intellect flourish and bloom in their 
perfection only when ripening and expanding in 
the clear and bracing atmosphere of moral virtue 
and Christian purity. We admire the brilliant 
and accomplished Aspasias, Zenobias, Cleopatras, 
Elizabeths, Catharines, Madame De Staels, but 
the heart goes forth to meet the mother of the 
Gracchi, the self-sacrificing Lucretia, the fearless 
and devoted Jeanie Deans, the fearless wife of 
La Roche Jaqueleine, the noble and heroic Grace 
Darling, and those pure-souled ministers of love 



1 34 First Principles of Popular Education, 



and mercy, Florence JSFiglitingale and our own in- 
comparable Dorothea Dix. And who is there 
who does not revere the memory of Mary, the 
mother of Washington? or drop a tear of ajffec- 
tionate regard and veneration over the graves 
of those high-souled matrons who, in the darkest 
hour of our country's early history, supported the 
drooping energies of its champions, and cheered 
them onward to victory and to fame ? 

Our tenderest sympathies and deepest grati- 
tude and affection accompany the members of 
that sisterhood of charity and Christian benefi- 
cence and love, which disarms sickness, disease 
and even death of half its bitterness and all 
its terrors ; and yet in how many humble cot- 
tages, far removed from the noise and bustle of 
the world, and overlooked and forgotten by the 
busy multitude, dwell noble and self sacrificing 
hearts, intent upon their mission of love, patient- 
ly and uncomplainingly watching over languid 
sufferers, silently enduring that " sickness of the 
heart" which comes from "hope deferred," and 
prospects blasted, and affections withered and 
wasted, and bravely and firmly bearing up 
against a fearful pressure of calamity, misfortune 
and wretchedness, admitting of no alleviation or 
consolation in the power of earth to bestow ! 



Female Educatio7z. 135 

Nor is this ministry of these eartUy angels con- 
fined to the cottages of the humble and the poor. 
In the abodes of wealth and luxury, in the state- 
ly mansion and the lofty palace, where riches and 
magnificence and grandeur and station and power 
abound, there comes a time when neither the 
towering intellect, nor the strong arm, nor all the 
treasures of the Indies, nor the trappings of rank, 
nor all the influence of greatness or of fame can 
avert the dread destroyer or postpone the inevita- 
ble hour. Then and there the quick eye of affec- 
tion only can interpret the unutterable desire of 
the parting spirit ; the hand of love only, calm the 
throbbing head and smooth the dying - pillow ; 
the accents of the cherished, familiar voices of 
home alone, whisper peace and hope — that peace 
which " passeth all understanding " — that hope 
which " takes fast hold of immortality." 

" Oh, woman, in our hour of ease, 
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, 
And variable as the shade 
By the light-quivering aspen made. 
When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
A ministering angel thou !" 

This is the education which we would have 
every woman of our land to receive. An educa- 
tion whichj while it shall develop and cultivate to 



136 First Principles of Popular Education, 

their utmost capacity lier intellectual powers and 
enable lier to range at will over tlie ample and 
diversified fields of literature and science in all 
their varied manifestations, shall so train, disci- 
pline and direct her affections and her moral na- 
ture as to render her in the truest, noblest and 
highest sense a " helpmeet for man " — ^the effect- 
ive participator, in her own appropriate sphere, 
of his toils and labors — ^the gentle and affection- 
ate soother of his cares — the enlightened and 
congenial companion of his studies — the grace 
and ornament of his happy and cheerful home — 
the intelligent instructor and guide of his chil- 
dren — the devoted wife, mother and friend — the 
accomplished member of society,. diffusing around 
her, wherever she moves, the fragrance, the beauty 
and the loveliness of virtue and Christian benevo- 
lence and beneficence. To her we would confide 
the education of our children, in the full and as- 
sured confidence that this sacred trust will be 
faithfully and conscientiously fulfilled. To her 
would we commit the guardianship of our homes, 
and as we unreservedly mingle in the crowded 
marts of business and the thronged highways of 
professional life, look forward with pleasant an- 
ticipation to the hour when we can divest our- 
selves of the irksome restraints and ever-recur- 



Female Education, 137 

ring cares of tlie day, and repose our wearied 
spirits in the congenial and grateful atmosphere 
of domestic love and unchanging affection. With 
her would we renovate, purify and inform our 
minds and strengthen our hearts from those ex- 
haustless fountains of wisdom and knowledge, 
fancy and imagination, beauty and sublimity, 
which ancient and modern literature supply, 
and with her drink deep from those perennial 
springs which '^ flow from Siloa's streams, fast by 
the oracles of God." Thus in life and in death — 
in prosperity and in adversity — ^in our hours of 
ease and enjoyment and happiness and tranquil- 
lity, and in the intervals of darkness and gloom 
and pain and suffering — mutually supporting and 
supported, giving and receiving the elements of 
joy and gladness, of consolation and sympathy- 
would we travel onward, side by side, hand in 
hand, fulfilling our mutual destiny in the commu- 
nication of knowledge, the diffusion of virtue and 
happiness, the extension of science, and the eleva- 
tion and improvement of our common humanity. 
This is our theory of " woman's rights " — our 
ideal of female education. If a broader and more 
comprehensive " platform " can be constructed by 
the agitators and reformers of the day — of either 
sex — we are ready to accept it and to plant our- 



138 First Principles of Popular Education, 

selves upon it whenever we shall become con- 
vinced that those for whom it is designed, and 
who are most interested in its construction, shall 
desire to avail themselves of its promised bene- 
fits. Till then we shall firmly adhere to those 
old and tried landmarks which the collective wis- 
dom and experience of all preceding ages have 
consecrated — which sound philosophy approves, 
and the practical good sense of mankind con- 
firms. When the day arrives — if it ever shall 
arrive — when woman "shoots madly from her 
sphere," and, abandoning that power and influence 
universally conceded to her over the hearts, the 
affections and the dispositions of man, asserts for 
herself an equality in those practical pursuits and 
employments for which he by nature and by ed- 
ucation is peculiarly fitted — when she abandons 
the homes and hearths which she alone can ren- 
der attractive, for the noisy turmoil and exciting 
scenes of restless ambition and the eager pursuits 
of business — when all that is beautiful and 
lovely and graceful in her character shall be ex- 
changed for the base rivalries of opposing and 
conflicting interests, and the empty pride and 
vain pageantry of titles, distinction and wealth — 
then, and not till then, shall we be prepared to 
confess, with profound humiliation and contrition, 



Female Education, 1 39 

that we had deplorably mistaken her inclinations, 
her affinities and her tendencies. Then, and not 
till then, shall we awaken to the melancholy con- 
sciousness of the deep delusion in which we have 
heretofore lived — to the baseless fabric of that 
golden dream of happiness and advancing knowl- 
edge and wisdom and power in which we had 
so long and so hopefully indulged. 




CHAPTER XL 



THE TEACHER HIS CHAEACTEK AND DUTY METT- 

TAL AND MOEAL DEVELOPMENT. 

THE process of education, as we have already 
seen, commences with the earliest inhalation 
of the vital element, and progresses with a con- 
stantly accelerated velocity, first under the aus- 
pices of the family circle, then of the elementary 
school and the family combined, and subsequent- 
ly becomes matured in the great school of the 
world, or of that portion of it which bounds the 
experience of each individual, and comprehends 
the circle in which it is his destiny to move. 
Nor will this process be in any respect retarded 
by inattention, neglect or mismanagement, how- 
ever much it may be guided, elevated, enlarged 
and directed by a wise vigilance and a discrim- 
inative culture. The work of education, either 
for good or for evil, so far as the individual who 
is the subject of it is himself concerned, will go 
on from birth to maturity, whether those whose 
appropriate duty and function it is to conduct its 



The Teacher^ etc, 141 

successive developments and sliape its course 
faitlifully discharge, or habitually neglect, or ig- 
norantly or intentionally pervert tlie responsible 
trust committed to tlieir charge. More than this. 
So sacred is the gift of an intelligent existence — 
so pure, holy and invigorating are all the minis- 
trations of Nature and Providence^so uniformly 
and invariably is "the wind tempered to the 
shorn lamb" — that given the elastic energies of 
a sound and healthy physical constitution, and 
the ordinary intellectual and moral faculties, the 
positive exertion of some counteracting external 
agency is required to pervert, to v^eaken or extin- 
guish the natural tendency to knov^ledge, to wis- 
dom and virtue and happiness. The desire for 
knowledge is implanted in the human mind as 
one of its uniform and constituent elements, and 
the budding plant does not more naturally or in- 
variably put forth its earliest energies in search 
of light, and its appropriate aliment, than does 
the expanding intellect grasp after knowledge — 
knowledge of itself — knowledge of the external 
world and all the manifold phenomena by which 
it sees itself surrounded. Full, however, as the 
world is of error, of vice and depravation and 
guilt, those counteracting tendencies which re- 
press the growth of the mind, pervert its energies 



142 First Principles of Popular Education, 

and lead it fearfully astray, seldom fail early to 
present themselves, even under tlie most favorable 
auspices, and to tinge with their dark hues the 
whole of future life. 

In estimating the power and the effects of the 
best and the most skillfully devised system of 
education, we are apt to lay far too little stress 
on the circumstances by which we are constantly 
surrounded, and which, like the air we breathe 
and the infinitesimal particles of matter which 
incessantly float around us, are incorporated to a 
greater or less extent, at every moment of our ex- 
istence, into our being. During that important 
portion of our lives ordinarily set apart for the 
specific communication of knowledge and moral 
and intellectual culture, these circumstances and 
associations are most powerful, impressive and 
efficacious in the formation and development of 
character, most tenacious in their hold upon our 
memory and our affections, and least capable of 
separation from the lessons with which they are 
abcompanied. 

Under these circumstances, neither the parent 
nor the educator can be said to have acquitted 
himself of the high responsibility which devolves 
upon him by the most systematic and clear com- 
munication of knowledge in any of its depart- 



The Teacher^ etc, 143 



ments, or by the faithful and lucid exposition of 
moral truth, unless he has assiduously, patiently 
and perseveringly explored the depths of the 
mind he has undertaken to discipline and in- 
struct — observed its constitution and its peculiar 
conformation— ascertained its elements both of 
weakness and strength — traced the principal dan- 
gers to which it is exposed from within and with- 
out — removed, so far as in him lies, the obstacles 
which impede its favorable development, or if 
that be found impracticable, furnished him with 
the mental and moral power either triumphantly 
to surmount or wisely to avail himself of those 
obstacles. The cultivator of the soil who should 
content himself with committing to the ground 
the best and most vigorous seeds, leaving them 
to germinate, expand and bring forth fruit, flow- 
ers and vegetables, without regard to any of 
the various circumstances which ordinarily im- 
pede or promote their growth, and claim, in vir- 
tue of this process, the meed of applause for 
his enlightened system of horticulture, would IBS- 
guilty of no more fatal error and deserve no more 
signal disapprobation than would the educator 
or the parent, who, shutting his eyes to the ever- 
varying phenomena of surrounding circumstances, 
and the necessity of assiduous culture and con- 



1 44 First Principles of Popular Education, 

stant supervision, expects from tlie most perfect 
system of intellectual instruction or moral ethics 
those just perceptions of truth and knowledge, 
and those harmonious proportions of character 
which constitute wisdom and virtue. 

It is neither to be denied nor overlooked 
that " a change has come o'er the spirit " of that 
" dream " which, within the personal recollection 
of most of us, limited the mission and the func- 
tions of the teacher to the abstract communica- 
tion of the mere elements of knowledge; to the 
preservation of a due degree of compulsory order 
within the repulsive precincts of the school-room, 
and to the fulfillment of the specific number of 
hours, days, weeks and months " nominated in the 
bond,"' by his personal attendance upon and su- 
pervision of a prescribed routine of tedious and 
monotonous exercises. It is not too much to say 
that an entire revolution in this respect has been 
effected within the last few years, and under our 
own immediate observation. In proportion as 
the value and importance of education has come 
to be recognized and understood in its relation to 
alt our interests — personal and political, social, 
economical and religious — has the necessity been 
felt of availing ourselves of the highest moral 
and intellectual qualifications for the proper de- 



The Teacher^ etc, 145 



velopment and cultivation of tlie mental faculties 
of the rising generation. In proportion as the 
pages of history and our own observation and ex- 
perience have forced upon us a clearer and deep- 
er conviction of the great truth, that knowledge 
and virtue conjoined are absolutely indispensable 
to the happiness and prosperity, as well of com- 
munities and states as of individuals, has there 
been a deeper and more extended interest in the 
practical results of the elementary school, and in 
the degree of efficiency which it is capable of 
realizing. 

No profession, no calling, can compare in util- 
ity, in the influence which it exerts, in the good 
which it can accomplish, in the evil which it can 
avert, in the prospects it can open up, in the hap- 
piness and well-being which- it can secm-e, with 
that of the teacher. No profession, no calling, 
should be so honorable or so desirable — as none 
demands for its faithful and efficient fulfillment 
so much and such varied mental culture and dis- 
cipline, so much moral worth, such unblemished 
purity of character and deportment, and such a 
combination of all the Christian virtues and 
graces. The reflex influence of these virtues and 
graces upon the affections, the -heart and the life 
of the teacher is his highest and noblest reward. 

G 



146 First Principles of Popular Education. 

Moral character is justly regarded as tlie first 
and most indispensable ingredient in tlie qualifi- 
cations of a teacher. Without this the possession 
of the most finished learning, the most transcend- 
ent talents and the most perfect skill in com- 
municating instruction would be valueless, and 
should be overlooked and disregarded. Those 
who are charged with the supervision of our ele- 
mentary institutions of learning can not too strict- 
ly guard' their portals from the contaminating 
influences of vice and immorality. Whatever 
other avenues the genius and spirit of our govern- 
ment and the free toleration of the age may have 
left open to those who have shaken off the ob- 
ligations of virtue and honor and conscience, and 
who, by precept and example, contemn the salu- 
tary restraints of morality and Christian civiliza- 
tion, the haunts of youthful instruction should at 
least firmly and sedulously be closed against 
them. Whatever impurities the broad channel 
of human life in its swift and accumulating cur- 
rent may be destined to receive, as it rolls on- 
ward to the great ocean of eternity, let not its 
stream be poisoned at its sources. In the con- 
stantly recurring shocks and conflicts of the 
world, enough and more than enough of contam- 
ination will cling to the skirts of the most con- 



The Teacher^ etc, 147 



scientious and pure-minded, without tainting the 
faculties of the mind and heart in their earliest 
development and expansion with a corruption 
which, it may be, not all the energies of an en- 
lightened reason or an awakened conscience, not 
all the efforts of the most determined will can ef- 
fectually obliterate or conceal. 

In the midst of a community where the rank 
weeds of vice and crime abound in luxuriant and 
frightful profusion — where, however apparently 
fertile the soil, the seeds of goodness and justice 
and virtue are speedily choked and overborne by 
the poisonous tares of selfishness, of passion and 
of error in all its Protean forms — nothing less 
than a deep and abiding principle of religion and 
morality can enable us to realize the rich fruits 
of rectitude and wisdom. How unspeakably im- 
portant, then, that this principle should be im- 
bibed with the first lessons of our infancy and 
childhood, that it may grow with our growth and 
strengthen with our strength — that it may be 
permanently associated with the pure and hal- 
lowed influences of life's opening dawn, and serve 
as an amulet to protect us against the rudest as- 
saults of the world and the strongest temptations 
to swerve from the path of duty ! The responsi- 
bility in this respect, assumed by those to whom 



148 First Principles of Popular Education, 



have been confided the task of furnishing the 
teachers of our elementary schools with the cre- 
dentials of their high and holy office, can not be 
too seriously pondered. 

Hitherto the question of the moral character 
of the teacher — the question which, above and 
beyond all others, is most important in its conse- 
quences — has been far too frequently postponed 
and neglected. The literary qualifications of the 
candidate have been seldom wholly overlooked^— 
his capacity to instruct, to communicate knowl- 
edge to his pupils, and, above all, the price at 
which his services may be commanded, are scru- 
tinized with the most jealous interest ; but " the 
daily beauty of his life " is an element seldom en- 
tering into the account, and if no palpable stain 
rests upon his character, if his outward deport- 
ment conforms substantially to the standard rec- 
ognized by the community at large, and he has 
hitherto come in conflict with none of its penal or 
social canons, he is regarded, if otherwise quali- 
fied, as abundantly competent to assume the 
guardianship of the elementary school. The re- 
sult has been that, while the intellectual faculties 
of the pupil have been tasked frequently to their 
utmost tension, the moral virtues — those which 
alone can give a value and right direction to 



The Teacher, etc, 149 



knowledge — those wliicli alone can secure happi- 
ness and well-being — wMcli alone can enable us 
adequately to fulfill all tlie duties appertaining 
to us as intelligent, social and responsible beings 
— have been neglected. The means of an indef- 
inite progression in all that ennobles and digni- 
fies our common humanity have been abundantly 
furnished ; but their end and aim have not been 
communicated, and power to accomplish the most 
wonderful results has been conferred upon thou- 
sands without the most remote knowledge of the 
uses to w^hich alone it can be efficiently conse- 
crated. 

The full and true idea of education can not be 
thoroughly realized until our elementary schools 
become the nurseries of our moral no less than 
of our intellectual and physical nature — until the 
mind is subjected from the period of its earliest 
development to that of its mature expansion to 
an enlightened and judicious cultivation of all its 
faculties — apprised of all its powers and their re- 
spective spheres of action — trained to a clear per- 
ception of intellectual and moral truths — imbued 
with an ardent love of excellence, and fortified 
and strengthened by a pervading sense of its 
own elevation, responsibility and destiny. The 
formation of such a character, and its multiplica- 



150 First Principles of Popular Education, 

tion and diffusion tLrougLout tlie numerous tlior- 
ougHfares of tlie social organization, would speedi- 
,ly eleyate tlie condition of humanity in all its 
aspects and relations. 

The great practical problem of the age in ref- 
erence to education is in what way and by what 
means the intellectual and moral faculties of the 
young are to be so developed, cultivated and di- 
rected as to enable their possessors, at the earliest 
practicable period, to render them subservient to 
the varied purposes of existence. Accurately or 
even approximately to solve this difficult prob- 
lem, demands all the energies of the clearest and 
most comprehensive intellect united to the most 
expansive philanthropy and to the most diversi- 
fied experience of human nature. That a partic- 
ular method of mental culture has in a given in- 
stance or a given number of instances been fol- 
lowed by a career of usefulness, honor and happi- 
ness, by no means authorizes us to conclude that 
a similar result will uniformly or even generally 
follow from a repetition of the process under oth- 
er and different circumstances. So variously 
combined are the intellectual and moral powers 
in different individuals, so variously modified the 
elements of character by innumerable circum- 
stances entering at every period of life into the 



The Teacher^ etc, 151 

mental structure, that it is next to impossible to 
lay down any fixed rule wMcli shall enable the 
educator to mould aright in all cases the plastic 
energies of thought and action committed to his 
charge. More particularly is this remark appli- 
cable to the development and direction of the 
moral faculties. Motives and inducements which 
operate powerfully and irresistibly with one class 
of minds are found utterly impotent and ineffica- 
cious with another. Arguments and reasonings 
which address themselves at once to the compre- 
hension and appreciation of one individual are 
urged in vain upon the understanding or the con- 
science of another. In some mi«ds the convic- 
tions of the moral sense predominate over all the 
allurements of vicious inclinations, and in con- 
junction with a well-balanced intellect secure, 
apparently without effort, a course of conduct in 
accordance with the dictates of enlightened reason 
and Christian obligation, while in others so feebly 
compacted are the barriers of moral restraint, and 
so active and energetic the vicious propensities, 
that the entire tendency of the mental organiza- 
tion is reversed, and the attainment of confirmed 
habits of virtue rendered possible only by a pain- 
ful, systematic and laborious process of self cult- 
ure, conducted under the most favorable auspices. 



152 First Principles of Popular Education. 

In short, tlie mental constitution and tendency 
of no two individuals of tlie race can be said to 
be tlie same, and consequently the elementary 
discipline wliicli is to prepare them for the great 
arena of life, with its duties, responsibilities, strug- 
gles, reverses, triumphs, must be infinitely diversi- 
fied in order to comprehend with any degree of 
ultimate success the innumerable varieties of dis- 
position and temperament which are thus found 
to exist. Still it is by no means impracticable to 
arrive at certain fundamental principles which, 
if not universally applicable to the mental and 
moral discipline of youth, vnll in the great major- 
ity of instance enable the educator to give that 
direction to the opening mind which will best 
conduce to its subsequent development and ex- 
pansion, to form those habits and mature those 
IDrincijDles which are to constitute the future char- 
acter, and to cultivate those virtues, the posses- 
sion of which is so indispensable to happiness. 

So important is a correct appreciation of these 
fundamental principles on the part of those who 
are charged with the education of the young, that 
it may safely be asserted that upon it depends 
almost exclusively the degree of success which 
their instructions, however valuable and compre- 
hensive in an intellectual point of view, shall be 



The Teacher, etc. 153 



found to have attained in tlie formation and 
development of character. Knowledge, however 
accurate and sound and firmly imbedded in the 
mind, is of no practical value to him whose moral 
nature has either been suffered to run to waste, 
or been distorted, disfigured and perverted by 
mistaken processes of discipline or the operation 
of untoward circumstances. By far the gi^eater 
portion of the accumulated evils of our modern 
political and social organization are unquestiona- 
bly attributable to the unequal development of 
the intellectual and moral faculties. The prog- 
ress of mere knowledge, of scientific induction, of 
artistic skill and ingenuity, has outstripped the 
capacity, and not unfrequently even the disposi- 
tion, to apply it to the highest and noblest pur- 
poses of life, and that power which was conferred 
upon man for the attainment of the perfection of 
his being in all its fair and beautiful proportions 
has been rendered subservient to mere material re- 
sults of time and sense. The want of adaptation 
between the godlike faculties of thought and rea- 
son, creative and inventive power, combination 
and concentration of physical and mental eftbrt, 
and the purposes in the civil, social and political 
economy, to which, with few exceptions, they have 
hitherto been applied, is mournfully apparent in 

G2 



1 54 First Principles of Popular Education, 

the deranged structure of modern civilization. 
Vice and crime, suffering and misery, want and 
destitution, violence, rapine and bloodshed in- 
crease and multiply, with the increase and multi- 
plication and diffusion of scientific knowledge 
and inventive skill, and the ponderous car of in- 
tellectual progress daily and hourly crushes be- 
neath its remorseless wheels whole hecatombs of 
victims to the sordid selfishness, the cold indiffer- 
ence, or the unrestrained passions of our modern 
civilization. 

This inequality in the advancement and im- 
provement of the intellectual and moral faculties 
can be corrected only by a more equal and har- 
monious mental development and culture in early 
youth. Moral education should be contempora- 
neous and commensurate with the intellectual 
progress. The great ideas of duty and responsi- 
bility, of truth, virtue, simplicity and singleness 
of character, benevolence and beneficence, should 
be constantly and clearly kept in view, reflected 
from the perfect mirror of Christianity, and irra- 
diated by the strong light of immortality. The 
^-tmosphere of the school-room should be perfect- 
ly free from the admixture of the baser ingredi- 
ents of passion in any of their shapes or forms. 
The artless innocence of childhood should there 



The Teacher, etc, 155 

uniformly find a congenial field for the realization 
of its joyous hopes, its beaming anticipations, its 
ardent desire for knowledge, for improvement 
and progress. The law of love, of kindness, of 
disinterested regard for the welfare and happi- 
ness of others, of sympathy for their woes, of for- 
giveness and forgetfulness of injuries, should be 
enforced by all those considerations derived from 
the natural and moral world which are constantly 
present to the eye and to the mind, and not an 
incident capable of being seized upon without 
the appearance of an effort, and affording an apt 
illustration of some valuable moral lesson, should 
be suffered to pass unimproved. 

Mildness and dignity of demeanor on the part 
of the teacher, perfect self-possession and perfect 
freedom from affectation, accompanied by the 
uniform manifestation of a paternal regard for 
the true interests, welfare and happiness of each 
individual committed to his charge, will seldom 
fail to make a deep and indelible impression 
upon the ingenuous moral nature of those who 
daily witness these attractive exhibitions. The 
cardinal elements of conduct and character thus 
insensibly become interfused and incorporated 
with their intellects and hearts, and under the 
fostering influences of paternal and social co-op- 



156 First Principles of PoptUar Education, 

eration will speedily ripen into durable habits 
and fixed principles of goodness and virtue. 
The occasional or frequent exhibition of passion, 
whether it assume the form of irritability, pee- 
vishness, harshness of expression, inequality of 
temper or corporal inflictions, is wholly repugnant 
to every sound theory or enlightened conception 
of intellectual or moral education. If, as the advo- 
cates for the retention of physical punishment in 
our elementary institutions of learning contend, 
the interests of education in its most comprehen- 
sive sense, including the development of the intel- 
lectual as well as the moral nature, are in truth 
promoted by these means, a phenomenon would 
be presented strikingly at variance with the or- 
dinary results of mental philosophy as deduced 
from the most comprehensive and thorough ex- 
amination of humanity in all its recognized ele- 
ments. If by the infliction of stripes, by corporal 
chastisement other than such as may be designed 
to effect needful restraint from the perpetuation 
of evil or of mischief, or to secure obedience to 
the reasonable requisitions of the teacher, the in- 
tellectual powers are developed or strengthened, 
or the moral faculties cultivated and expanded, a 
new and distinct element of knowledge exists 
not heretofore enumerated by philosophers or ed- 



The Teacher^ etc, 157 



ucationists — an element, too, which is always at 
hand, and one but too congenial to a certain class 
of minds, which, unfortunately for the interests of 
education, has long exercised an important influ- 
ence over the details of elementary public instruc- 
tion. The ablest writers on educational topics, 
both in Europe and America, not only of the 
present day but from the earliest period of 
modern civilization — practical and experienced 
teachers, whose success in the communication of 
knowledge and the formation of character has 
been most abundant and satisfactory — and by far 
the greater portion of those who in an official ca- 
pacity have been called upon to superintend this 
extensive department of our political and social 
economy, have concurred in the uniform and re- 
peated expression of the inadequacy, inexpedien- 
cy and injurious tendency of this mode of disci- 
pline. So powerful, universal and strong has 
been the manifestation of an enlightened public 
opinion in this respect, that while in nine out of 
ten, and perhaps a still larger proportion, of the 
public schools of Germany, France and Holland, 
and in all those institutions which we have dur- 
ing nearly a quarter of a century regarded as the 
most perfect models, this species of punishment 
has entirely disappeared, in our own schools it 



158 First Principles of Popular Education. 

has been driven to the very utmost verge of toler- 
ation, and is with gratifying unanimity recognized 
only as the "forlorn hope," the ultimate resort 
when all other means of discipline have been 
faithfully and perseveringly attempted and failed. 
"Wherever teachers have been found possessing 
the requisite talents and administrative ability to 
secure the pleasing exercise of the intellectual 
and moral faculties upon the innumerable objects 
of nature and art — ^to call into play the finer and 
nobler sentiments of the affections — so to vary the 
routine of instruction as to afford room for the 
equal and harmonious development of the char- 
acteristic germs of intellect and of thought which 
are found to exist in each, and to substitute the 
universal sanctions of morality, which the most 
immature intellect can comprehend and appreci- 
ate, for the summary appeal to force and violence, 
the results have uniformly been such as triumph- 
antly to vindicate the principle here asserted. 
The path of knowledge becomes strewed with 
flowers ; the virtues and graces of humanity bud, 
blossom and expand under the genial influences 
of kindness and love, and the foundations of fu- 
ture usefulness, happiness and well-being are per- 
manently and durably laid. The teacher comes 
to his task with a mind thoroughly imbued with 



The Teacher^ etc. 159 

the principles and details of elementary knowl- 
edge — in full possession of physical healtli — with. 
a firm determination to refrain from every, the 
least, exhibition of passion or of temper — with 
an amiable disposition and a heart "open as 
day " to all the mild and holy and beautiful in- 
fluences of childhood. By an indefinable attrac- 
tion, which experience has shown to be almost as 
invariable and as certain as that of the magnet to 
the pole, the hearts of the children intuitively re- 
spond to these unaffected manifestations of inter- 
est and regard which beam from the countenance 
and pervade the actions of a teacher thus mental- 
ly constituted. At a suitable hour the buoyant 
energies of the tumultuous and busy crowd are 
temporarily checked, and a strain of music, at- 
tuned to 'sweetest harmony, even in the midst of 
apparent discord, by innocent and happy voices, 
insensibly but effectually soothes, solemnizes and 
elevates the mind, and prepares it to listen rever- 
ently and with attention to the words of Him 
who " spake as never man spake," and to unite 
with their teacher in ascription of thanksgiving 
to the great Governor of the universe for all his 
blessings, and the expression of filial trust in him 
for their continuance. 

This periodical and solemn recognition of the 



1 60 First Principles of Popular Education, 

relations whicli exist between the Creator of the 
universe and themselves can not fail to exert a 
most beneficial influence upon the minds and the 
consciences of the children, and to impress them 
with a sense of moral responsibility eminently 
favorable to the development of their mental fac- 
ulties. The pupils are then distributed, arranged 
and grouped together into classes according to 
their respective attainments and proficiency, and 
page after page of the varied and ample volume 
of knowledge is unfolded to their view — its con- 
tents clearly and methodically pointed out and 
explained, their connection with the world of 
matter and of mind demonstrated and applied, 
and the desire for progressive advancement in- 
duced and strengthened by each succeeding step. 
When the physical and mental energies of the 
pupils begin to flag, the equilibrium is restored 
by changing the order of exercises — by the in- 
spiriting effects of music, or by the refreshing in- 
fluences of muscular exercises in the open air. 

Occasional symptoms of insubordination — ^the 
involuntary recurrence perhaps of habits not yet 
entirely extirpated — the results it may be of in- 
cipient physical derangement or of mental dis- 
comfort — of an irrepressible propensity for the 
time being to escape from the salutary control of 



The Teacher^ etc, 1 6 1 



authority, however lightly it may press, or of 
heedlessness and thoughtlessness — in short, any 
of those multifarious and often inexplicable 
sources of perverted action which seem to be the 
heritage of humanity in its best estate, are met by 
a direct or indirect appeal to the supremacy of 
the nobler reason, to the controlling and restrain- 
ing force of the higher faculties of thought and 
action, or successfully repelled by a skillful diver- 
sion of the mental and corporal energies to some 
more attractive field of exercise. Affectionate 
and well-timed appeals to the moral sense and 
better feelings of the more serious offender, ac 
companied if necessary by the indirect but pow 
erful pressure of adequate restraint within cer 
tain specific boundaries beyond which transgres 
sion is rendered impracticable — these, together 
with a variety of efficient motives which may be 
brought to bear by a skillful and experienced 
teacher, speedily put an end to the offense, while 
they at the same time effectually reprove the of- 
fender. Sentiments of reciprocal affection and 
attached regard insensibly spring up between 
the teacher and each individual under his charge, 
and the atmosphere of the school-room soon be- 
comes so congenial to the child that he looks for- 
ward to the hours devoted to its pleasing exer- 



1 62 First Principles of Popular Education, 



cises and grateful recreations botli of body and 
of mind witli joyful anticipations and an inde- 
scribable pleasure. Then come tlie exhilarating 
excitement and enjoyment of the periodical exam- 
inations, exhibitions and celebrations ; the eager 
but chastened competition ; the desire of excel- 
lence and the struggle for success; the tumultu- 
ous but interesting throng of happy faces and 
beating hearts; and the triumphant exhibition 
of useful acquisitions ; thus agreeably fixing for- 
ever in their memories and hearts the joyous as- 
sociations of the school, unaccompanied by the 
festering recollection of scenes of violence, pas- 
sion, vindictiveness, cruelty or harshness. 




CHAPTEE XII. 

SUPEEYISION AND INSPECTION". 

THE experience of the most enlightened educa- 
tors of our own and other countries, and the 
concurring testimony of all writers on this topic, 
coincide in placing the influences exerted on our 
institutions of elementary public instruction by 
frequent visitation and thorough inspection at 
the head of the most efficient means for their ad- 
vancement and improvement. To these more 
than to any other source, or to all other sources 
combined, are to be attributed the superior excel- 
lence and comparative perfection of the schools 
of Prussia, Germany and Holland. Deprived of 
these, the most varied and profound attainments 
on the -part of the teacher, the most judicious 
system of culture and discipline, and the most 
liberal public or private appropriations in aid of 
popular education will not accomplish the great 
object which all should have in view. The in- 
vigorating effects of a faithful and systematic su- 



1 64 First Principles of Popular Education. 

pervision alone can maintain tLat pervading sense 
of responsibility on the part of tlie teacher, and 
that consciousness of a sympathetic interest, be- 
yond the limit of the school-room, on the part of 
the pupils, which furnish the aliment and the ex- 
citement to the labors of both. 

The superintendent or inspector is presumed 
to be in all essential respects well versed in the 
science of education ; to be master of its princi- 
ples as well comprehensively as in detail ; to be 
conversant with the best and most approved 
modes of instruction, of government and of disci- 
pline ; to be acquainted with the practical opera- 
tion and result of different systems of mental cult- 
ure, and capable of distinguishing between such 
as are, upon the whole, best adapted to the pur- 
poses in view, and such as are defective in princi- 
ple and untenable theory, in discriminating be- 
tween the systems themselves and their admin- 
istration ; of judiciously separating what is un- 
sound and impracticable in each from what, in it- 
self and when properly administered, is valuable 
and worthy of adoption; and of so combining 
the varied excellences of all, while he rejects ev- 
ery admixture of error, as to secure and perpetu- 
ate a firm basis upon which future improvements 
may be superinduced. The frequent presence, 



Supervision and Inspection, 165 

advice and counsel of sucli an officer can not fail 
of exerting a marked influence on tlie progress 
of the school. The information which he is able 
to communicate respecting the condition of other 
schools in the town and in the country ; the en- 
couraging assurances which he gives of the inter- 
est manifested in every section of the state — in 
adjoining states, in Europe — on the subject of 
that great system of elementary public instruc- 
tion, of which the humblest and most obscure 
school forms a part ; the improvements which 
he suggests, the inducements he holds out, the 
hopes he encourages, and the enthusiasm he im- 
parts to teacher, to parents and to pupils — all 
these motive powers to enlightened and perse- 
vering effort in the attainment and diffusion of 
knowledge are eminently conducive to the steady 
advancement and rapid improvement of our com- 
mon schools. Without these, swarms of mere 
pedagogues — vapid pretenders to knowledge, life- 
less drones expelled from every other department 
of industry for their unfitness and want of ca- 
pacity — will find a safe and unquestioned retreat 
where they should most vigilantly be excluded, 
where they can not fail of accomplishing the 
most disastrous results, where they poison the 
very fountains of knowledge and character and 



1 66 First Principles of Popular Education. 



happiness, and sow in profusion those seeds of 
idleness, of ignorance and of vice wMcli no after- 
culture can effectually eradicate. Without these, 
the most impracticable and absurd systems of mis- 
called instruction are perpetuated — a monotonous 
and unintelligible routine of dull formalities is re- 
peated for days and weeks and months without 
the communication of a single idea, or the inculca- 
tion of a solitary principle of virtue — the bodies 
and the minds of the unhappy victims of igno- 
rance and credulity are oppressed and perverted, 
and the season of youth and innocence and enjoy- 
ment — the period when, under more genial and 
enlightened auspices, the glorious light of the sun 
and the inspiring breezes of heaven are not more 
welcome to the buoyant energies of the physical 
nature than are knowledge and instruction to the 
mind — this brief and beautiful spring-time of life 
— so brief, so evanescent, and yet so rich with 
the germs of future progress and expansion — be- 
comes the darkest, the most hopeless and most 
gloomy period of existence. The history of the 
past in this respect abundantly confirms the ac- 
curacy of the picture here drawn. 

The government and discipline of the schools, 
including the mode of teaching pursued, consti- 
tute an essential feature in their character and 



Supervision and Inspection. 167 

means of usefulness, and should be faithfully and 
thoroughly scrutinized. In the absence of a sys- 
tematic preparation of teachers, through the agen- 
cy of a seminary expressly devoted to this pui'- 
pose, the officers called upon to investigate their 
qualifications can of necessity look no farther 
than their general moral character and intellect- 
ual attainments. They possess no means of knov^- 
ing their capability of communicating instruction 
to others, even in those branches in which they 
are themselves most thoroughly conversant and 
familiar. They can not penetrate behind the veil 
of that external moral deportment v^hich may 
nevertheless conceal deplorable inequalities of 
temper, uncongeniality of spirit with the vocation 
of the teacher, and a total want of affinity to the 
nature of youthful minds — a nature sure to be 
attracted, as the needle to the pole, toward the 
magnet of a congenial mind. They must see the 
teacher in the school-room — ascertain his practi- 
cal qualifications for the discharge of the duties 
which he has undertaken — his views of the sci- 
ence of education and the practical result of those 
views — his mode of developing the intellectual 
faculties and cultivating the moral nature of his 
pupils under the diversified manifestations of 
each, which are constantly presented to his notice 



1 68 First Principles of Popular Education. 

— his system of government and discipline, and 
its e:Sfects ; and they must critically observe from 
time to time the progress which, under his direc- 
tion, his pupils have made — not in knowledge 
merely, but in that sound mental and moral cult- 
ure w^hich forms and matures character. 

Under the vast impulse which has been given 
to the philosophy of the human mind during the 
last half - century, elementary education has as- 
sumed the rank, and, we may almost add, the pre- 
cision and certainty of a science. Its principles 
have been thoroughly investigated by the ablest 
and most profound minds, and all its details have 
been subjected to the test of practical analysis 
under circumstances well adapted to the ascer- 
tainment of truth. The teacher, therefore, who 
feels the dignity and importance of his profes- 
sion, and earnestly desires to discharge his whole 
duty, has it in his power to familiarize himself 
with the results of the experience of those who, 
in his own and other countries, have sought out 
and applied the best methods of instruction and 
discipline, and he owes it to himself, as well as 
to his employers and the community, to attain 
and avail himself of this knowledge to the ut- 
most practical extent. His system of instruction 
should be in accordance with the soundest prin- 



Supervision and Inspection, 169 



ciples of educational science — adapted to tlie 
moral and intellectual requirements of every 
grade of mind — eminently practical in all its de- 
partments — and so administered as to carry for- 
ward tlie mental faculties of eacli and every 
pupil to tlie attainment in tlie shortest possible 
period of that pov^er of self culture and self con- 
trol which shall enable him, in every emergency 
of life, to " act well his part," and fulfill the vari- 
ous duties appertaining to him as a moral and 
intelligent being. If the teacher is radically de- 
ficient in these high requisites of his calling — if 
he lacks practical efficiency — if he is wanting in 
that aptitude in the communication of instruction 
without which the highest degree of learning is 
of no avail beyond the precincts of his own mind 
— above all, if he manifests no interest in his vo- 
cation, no sympathy with the expanding minds 
around him, no enlightened appreciation of the 
interests committed to his charge, and no capabil- 
ity of drawing forth and developing the immor- 
tal germ of mind in the rich and various soil 
spread out before him — he should be frankly and 
fully advised of his deficiency, and promptly re- 
moved from a station where his longer continu- 
ance must be productive of unmitigated evil — 
the consequences of which, immediate and re- 

H 



1 70 First Principles of Popular Education, 

mote, are and must be, from tlie nature of tlie 
case, incalculable. It must be borne in mind 
that our schools are designed for the benefit, not 
of the teacher, but of the pupils, and that the in- 
terests of the latter should be made invariably to 
take precedence of the former, whenever the two 
come in conflict. 




CHAPTEE XIII. 

SYSTEMS OF PUBLIC II^STRUCTIOIT THEIR EREOES 

AND DEFECTS. 

IT is customary on public occasions to indulge 
somewhat indiscriminately in laudatory enco- 
miums on the progress and advancement of popu- 
lar education; to felicitate ourselves on tlie as- 
surance that the period in which we live has 
attained to the perfection of human excellence 
and power; that the country of our birth or 
adoption, the institutions we and our forefathers 
have built up, the high civilization which sur- 
rounds us, the rich treasures of our past history, 
and the bright prospects which await us in the 
future are unsurpassed in the annals of recorded 
time. It may be that the essential spirit of these 
complacent allegations is to a very considera- 
ble extent justified by the incontrovertible facts 
which surround us as a people. It is, however, 
the part of wisdom from time to time to inquire, 
with all due reverence and humility, whether the 
most decided superiority of attainment and ad- 



172 First Principles of Popular Education, 

vancement implies excellence of tlie highest prac- 
ticable grade — whether, rapid and brilliant as 
has been onr progress in literary and scientific 
culture, much does not yet remain to be effected 
— many prejudices and errors to be overcome, 
many improvements to be made, and whether it 
may not be expedient occasionally to pause in 
our onward career, calmly and dispassionately to 
review our position and ascertain its permanent 
lights and shades, its true tendencies, and the 
sources alike of its weakness and its strength. 

It may be said, the time has not yet come 
when we may safely discard the authority of 
long established usage, even though that usage 
be clearly demonstrated to be untenable in prin- 
ciple, and unsatisfactory, if not pernicious, in its 
results. We are surrounded on every hand by 
institutions, habits, usages, principles, many of 
them originating in past centuries, under the in- 
fluence of agencies whose forces have long since 
ceased to operate, some of them wholly indefen- 
sible in theory and injurious in practice, and oth- 
ers simply barren and obsolete, which, neverthe- 
less, we continue to retain and cherish by general 
consent, while they are manifestly retarding our 
intellectual progress, undermining the very fabric 
of our moral being, and eating, like a canker, at 



Errors and Defects, 173 

tlie sources of our individual prosperity and hap- 
piness. Kasli innovations are doubtless to be 
deprecated, in every department of our political, 
social, or personal relations ; but of what avail 
are advancing knowledge and tha accumulated 
experience of ages, if we neglect to apply them, 
as they are attained, to the removal of existing 
abuses, the dissipation of erroneous theories, the 
abandonment of false principles and the substitu- 
tion of sound views of life and action % 

With every allowance for that salutary dis- 
trust of the entire accuracy of our own strongest 
convictions, which would preclude us from imme- 
diate and efficient action in the direction to 
which they may point, we may, at least, submit 
these convictions, in all their force, to the candid 
and dispassionate consideration of our fellow- 
men, and to the unbiased judgment of those who 
are to succeed us on life's busy stage — of those 
whose minds and hearts are yet comparatively 
free from the hardening or the debilitating influ- 
ences of the world, and whose interest in the 
practical recognition of truth and duty is, as yet, 
unaffected by the almost irresistible pressure of 
conflicting circumstances. When, therefore, we 
venture to arraign before the general bar of that 
public sentiment which may truly be character- 



1 74 First Principles of Popular Education, 

ized as " the heir of all the ages, in the foremost 
files of time," any of the shortcomings, faults or 
foibles of our educational systems, it is not with 
any claim to infallibility in the convictions we 
have reached, or any expectation or desire of ef- 
fecting an immediate and radical change ; but 
simply and solely with the design of remitting 
them for a fair and impartial trial before a com- 
petent tribunal, that their character and results 
may be fully investigated and a true verdict ren- 
dered accordingly. 

First, then, our systems of popular education 
and public instruction, taken as a whole, do not 
seem to be sufficiently com'prehenswe^ either in 
their aim or their results. They do not ad- 
equately provide for the physical, intellectual, 
moral and spiritual wants of our nature. They 
do not adequately fit us for the varied duties, 
cares and responsibilities of active life. They 
fail to confer upon us the power of self culture 
by the timely, harmonious and judicious develop- 
ment of all the faculties of our being. They re- 
gard the subjects of their discipline too much as 
classes, and too little as individuals. They take 
cognizance too exclusively of the intellectual, to 
the neglect of the moral and religious nature, the 
affections and the heart. They have regard 



Errors and Defects. 175. 

rather to attainments than conduct — to knowl- 
edge than character — to the flower than to the 
fruit. And second, as systems they are fragment- 
ary, disconnected, incomplete, and consequently 
comparatively inefficient. The elementary or 
common school is found in great perfection in 
many portions of our country, but completely 
isolated from the higher institutions of learning. 
Academies, colleges and universities are scattered 
over the land, each occupying an independent 
position, and having no connection with those 
above or below them in the scale of literary ad- 
vancement. No effective provision is made for 
the intellectual and moral culture of large and 
rapidly increasing classes of children and adults, 
w^ho are thus left a prey to the grossest ignorance 
and the most formidable temptations to crime. 

Not only the power but the obligation of the 
State to provide ample facilities for the education 
of all its future citizens, is fully conceded by 
modern legislators and statesmen, and through- 
out New England, in New York, Pennsylvania, 
many of the Western and some of the Southern 
States this great principle is recognized, and to 
a greater or less extent carried out by statutory 
enactments. But whence is this power derived, 
and out of what circumstances does the obliga- 



176 First Principles of Popular Education. 

tion spring ? Botli are clearly derived from the 
reciprocal rights and duties of the governing and 
the governed — the one affording protection to 
persons and property, securing peace and order 
and upholding the majesty and the supremacy of 
the laws, and the other submitting to all necessa- 
ry and proper restraints, and yielding up a por- 
tion of their natural liberty for the attainment of 
these high and most desirable purposes. Neither 
of these objects can be accomplished, save under 
an iron despotism, in the absence of general intel- 
ligence. Every citizen, therefore, possesses an in- 
defeasible right to the free acquisition of knovrl- 
edge, of which no government has the right to 
deprive him ; and it is not only the duty but the 
highest interest of every republican government, 
regarded in a merely political point of view, to 
provide for the widest possible diffusion of 
knowledge. But while every citizen may thus 
demand of the government the provision of all 
the requisite facilities for a liberal education, why 
may not the government, with equal propriety^ 
demand of every citizen that he shall faithfully 
avail himself of these facilities, when thus furnish- 
ed for his own mental and moral culture, and that 
of those placed under his charge ? Is it not no- 
torious that the millions and hundreds of mil- 



Errors and Defects, 177 

lions lavislied witli such profuse and bounteous 
liberality for the education of the people during 
the past half-century have been rendered almost 
nugatory, so far as the criminal expenses of gov- 
ernments are concerned, by the continued preva- 
lence of those large masses of ignorance, com- 
bined with destitution and vagabondism, which 
are found in all our great cities and towns, and 
infest, to an alarmingly increasing extent, even 
the quietude and seclusion of our rural villages 
and hamlets ? Would it not be wise to arrest 
this fearfully downward tendency by the efficient 
exertion of that unquestionable power which ev- 
ery commonwealth possesses, not only to furnish 
abundant facilities for the education of all its fu- 
ture citizens, but to insist that each and every 
one of those citizens shall, in some way and to 
such an extent at least as may afford reasonable 
assurances of upright and virtuous conduct, par- 
ticipate in these advantages? Can any system 
of popular education and public instruction, how- 
ever skillfully devised and ably administered, 
hope permanently to elevate the condition and 
advance the progress of individuals and commu- 
nities while hemmed in and surrounded on every 
hand by the impenetrable legions of ignorance 
and crime ? 

H2 



178 First Principles of Popular Education. 

The time lias arrived wlien with us education 
should not only be universal but practical, thor- 
ough and comprehensive. It is not enough that 
a portion merely, hovrever large, or even the ma- 
jority of the people should participate in its 
benefits. Every individual, however obscure, 
friendless, destitute, vicious or imbecile, should be 
taken by the hand at the earliest dawn of his 
faculties, and trained to habits and principles of 
virtue, his intellect enlightened and expanded, 
and all the various faculties of his nature harmo- 
niously developed and directed. It is not enough 
that the elementary principles of science should 
be communicated to the rising generation. Lib- 
eral provision should be made for the most ad- 
vanced culture which, the necessities or the in- 
clinations of the individual mind may require, 
and the extent and degree of that culture should 
be limited only by those circumstances and tend- 
encies which clearly prescribe the future course 
of life and theatre of action of each. In other 
words, each individual should be assured such an 
amount and degree of literary, scientific and ar- 
tistical knowledge as he may deem necessary or 
desirable for all those objects, ends and aims 
which his peculiar situation in life, his predomi- 
nant tastes, genius, ambition and powers specially 



Errors and Defects, 1 79 



require. Then, and- tlien only, will lie be fully 
qualified to discharge all the duties incumbent 
upon him, and to reimburse to the community a 
thousand-fold the amount it has thus wisely and 
generously expended in his education. By this 
liberal policy, and by this alone, will the State 
assure itself of the consecration to its highest in- 
terests, moral, social, political and material, of all 
the faculties, energies, and powers of each one of 
its citizens, afford free scope for the legitimate 
and pleasurable exercise of every mental endow- 
ment, circumscribe within the smallest limits the 
domain of vice and crime, pauperism and destitu- 
tion, by conferring upon all the ability, and with 
it, so far as may be attainable in the present im- 
perfect condition of humanity, the inclination to 
pursue a career of usefulness, honor, fame and 
virtue. I am not enthusiast enougb to suppose, 
indeed, that by any possible advancement of so- 
ciety or education the wayward passions of our 
frail and perverted nature in their myriad com- 
binations, with infinitely varying circumstances 
and conditions, often hopelessly struggling under 
a heavy burden of transn^itted and powerful pro- 
pensities to evil, can be so disciplined and trained 
as to render the criminal tribunal and the detect-- 
ive police, the prison, the penitentiary and the 



1 80 First Principles of Popular Education, 

gallows, tlie poor-liouse, the hospital and tlie asy- 
lum, the discarded relics of a past age. But 
when I am solemnly assured by the ablest, most 
experienced, intelligent, and upright educators of 
the age, speaking without concert, with entire 
unanimity and the most perfect confidence, that, 
with only the limited and imperfect means now 
possessed by them and their associates for the 
education of the rising generation, ninety -nine 
out of every hundred committed to their charge 
during the period ordinarily devoted to elementa- 
ry instruction, may be made the ornaments and 
the pride of society — virtuous, intelligent and use- 
ful men, good citizens, truthful witnesses, enlight- 
ened and impartial judges and jurors — prompt to 
every good work and to every noble impulse of 
humanity, and fully prepared for the discharge 
of every duty and obligation of life ; when, too, 
from personal and careful investigation of the 
records of criminal conviction of the most popu- 
lous state in the Union, during a period of ten 
consecutive years, I find that of nearly thirty 
thousand convicts, less than three hundred had 
received such an education as the best country 
schools now afford; when I look into our im- 
mense and costly establishments for the support 
and maintenance of the poor, and find them al- 



Errors and Defects, 1 8 1 



most exclusively occupied by the grossly igno- 
rant and uneducated, not one in a thousand with 
any pretensions to literary culture — when I de- 
liberately weigh and'comjDare and reflect upon 
these results, they seem to me abundantly to jus- 
tify the most sanguine anticipations for the fu- 
[ture well-being of society and of individuals, as 
the direct consequence of universal, wise and 
well-directed moral and intellectual culture. 

In order, however, to secure to the greatest 
possible extent the blessings of a sound and uni- 
versal education, there must exist a systematic- 
enlightened co-operation between different grades 
of institutions. The primary or purely element- 
ary school, the grammar school, the high school, 
the academy, the college and the university must 
constitute parts of one great and comprehensive 
system, each aiming at specific results, with direct 
and constant reference both to that by which it 
is preceded and to that which is to follow it, and 
all combined constituting a full and complete 
course of instruction with reference, to the great- 
est practicable extent, to the particular wants and 
probable future destination of each of its sub- 
jects. The State has already taken under its es- 
pecial patronage and regard the common school 
in all its various departments ; in some instances 



1 82 First Principles of Popular Education. 

it h^s even gone farther, and made liberal pro- 
visions for a Mglier academical, and in one in- 
stance, at least — that of the New York Free 
College — for a complete collegiate course. Why 
should it not expand its arms and embrace with- 
in its beneficent scope every grade of instruc- 
tion, from the lowest to the highest, from the 
infant or primary school to the university — 
calling to its aid every variety of talent and 
ability which the country affords, and present- 
ing a powerful and efficient stimulus to the ut- 
most exertion and highest skill of the most ac- 
complished scholars and the most finished educa- 
tion? ^ 

Of all these institutions, the lowest in rank — 
the primary or elementary school — is far the most 
important. It is there that the foundations of 
future character are, or should be, laid; there 
that a permanent and abiding impulse is or 
should be given to the intellect, the affections, 
and the will. It is a great mistake to supjDOse 
that the work of education does not commence 
until the intellect is sufficiently matured fully to 
comprehend the propositions laid before it. From 
the earliest dawn of sensation, from the first faint 
impressions of the external world, throughout the 
entire period of infancy, the work of education. 



Errors and Defects. 183 

intellectually and morally, is in active and in- 
cessant progress, and far greater and more aston- 
ishing advances are made than at any subsequent 
period. The earlier, therefore, after this period, 
the child is committed to the charge of a compe- 
tent instructor, the better. Instead, however, of 
that senseless, tedious and monotonous routine of 
letters, syllables, words and phrases which so 
generally occupies the hours devoted to element- 
ary instruction, the first years of school life should 
be exclusively occupied in what has been so 
beautifully and expressively characterized by an 
eloquent writer and eminently practical educator 
of New England as " Unconscious Tuition " — in 
the gentle development and training of the affec- 
tions; in the discipline of the passions, at that 
only period when they can be effectually disci- 
plined ; in the communication of a general knowl- 
edge of the productions of nature, and the various 
combinations of art ; in the delightful culture of 
the imagination — that important faculty which 
takes such marvelous possession of the infant 
mind, that wonderful depository where are gath- 
ered up, in life's bright and sunny morning, those 
inexliaustible treasures of transfigured Nature, to 
be reproduced, in future days, with all their cher- 
ished associations, as the living poetry of exist- 



1 84 First Principles of Popular Education, 

ence, the prolonged memory of life's fresh and 
fragrant dawn — 

" Those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections, 
Which, be they what they may. 
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, 
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing, 
Uphold us, cherish us, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments m the being 
Of the eternal silence, truths that wake 

To perish never. 
Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, 

!N"or man, nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish, or destroy." 

It is here, in the primary school, that child- 
hood, surrounded by all the pleasant associations 
of home affections, familiarized with the beauti- 
ful in nature and in art, all its energies of 
thought and action agreeably stimulated and ex- 
cited, and all its impulses pure, unselfish, and 
innocent, should be gently and unconsciously 
moulded into every form of mental and moral 
excellence and power. If this decisive period be 
suffered to pass by without improvement — if 
these rapidly-fleeting hours have flown onward 
without gathering and assimilating those ama- 
ranthine flowers of beauty, virtue, truthfulness 



Errors and Defects, 1 8 5 



and love, wliicli shed their fragrance over the 
whole of life's future path, there is slender prob- 
ability that at any subsequent period the golden 
opportunity can be recalled. The associations 
connected with childhood are, as we all know, in- 
timately bound up with the principles, habits, 
pursuits and aspirations of manhood — entering as 
an essential element into the very web and woof 
of character — unconsciously stealing into the 
"chambers of imagination," and asserting their 
power amid the strongest temptations and in the 
hour, of deepest trial. They constitute a reserved 
fund of moral and spiritual strength to be drawn 
upon when every other source may perchance 
have failed — a life-boat in which the wrecked 
outcast of humanity may safely reach the haven 
of rest. 

The cultivation of the intellect follows, natu- 
rally and gracefully, in the train of this genial 
and kindly discipline of the moral and spiritual 
nature in its earliest expansion ; and from this 
point the two should be inseparable. In the 
normal and healthful condition of the affections 
— the just and equal balance of the moral nature 
— the mental powers instinctively demand knowl- 
edge from every attainable source. Knowledge, 
first of all, of the wonderful world in which they 



1 86 First Principles of Popular Education, 

are placed ; of tlie external Tiniverse in all its de- 
partments; of sensible and material objects— their 
origin, uses and ends; next, of tlie human race; 
the history of mankind ; the annals of states, em- 
pires, kingdoms and governments ; the biography 
and remarkable traits of eminent, good and great 
men ; then, of the more abstruse and higher de- 
partments of science ; the structure and philoso- 
phy of language ; the complex and yet simple 
combinations of mathematical demonstration ; the 
sublime teachings of astronomy ; the vast and al- 
most inconceivable periods and hieroglyphical 
records of geology ; the varied combinations and 
transformations of chemistry; the mysteries of 
electricity, magnetism, and their kindred powers ; 
until they reach those deeper and profounder 
mysteries of the human soul itself — its origin, its 
powers, its varied capacities of enjoyment and 
suffering, and its immortality. 

And here, as it seems to me — in this depart- 
ment of intellectual training — our existing sys- 
tems of education far too generally fall short of 
that practical efficiency, that breadth and depth 
and comprehensiveness of culture, which is alike 
demanded by the structure and req^uirements of 
the human mind, and by the varied and pressing 
wants of society There is too much of didactic 



Errors and Defects. 1 8 7 

and authoritative teaching, too little of inductive 
and suggestive ; too mucli of instruction, and too 
little of that higher and better education which 
confers substantial and permanent power — the 
power of self culture — the independent, free, bold 
and invigorating exercise of one's own individual 
faculties. The elementary principles of every 
science, the foundations upon which it rests, its 
alphabet, its essential structure and components, 
its symbols and terminology, must, indeed, be 
communicated; and in all these respects the ut- 
most accuracy, precision, fullness and clearness of 
enunciation and illustration are indispensable. 
Beyond this the student should be thrown as 
much as possible upon his own resources, and left 
to follow out these fundamental principles to 
their legitimate conclusions on the pinions of 
his own expanding intellect, aided only, and 
that sparingly, when his utmost energies have 
been faithfully but unavailingly put forth to 
reach some necessary but otherwise \inattainable 
height. 

The habit of close, continuous, accurate induc- 
tion — of analyzing principles and tracing them to 
their conclusions — of sounding the depths of sci- 
entific investigation — of detecting and removing 
fallacies — rejecting erroneous preconceptions and 



1 88 First Principles of Popular Education, 

prejudices, and examining questions from every 
attainable point of view and on every side, before 
definitively passing upon them — is, of itself, a 
most valuable discipline of the mental powers, 
essential, indeed, to the formation of a sound 
thinker and practical reasoner. How often, in 
the intercourse of society, in the transaction of 
its most important and momentous affairs, in the 
halls of legislation, the tribunal of justice, the 
haunts of commerce, the pulpit and the press, the 
numerous literary and scientific associations of 
the day, at the polls, do we feel and lament the 
absence of this great element of accurate, impar- 
tial, discriminating judgment — unbiased by pas- 
sion, unfettered by prejudice, untrammeled by 
authority, accessible to conviction, open to truth, 
from w^hatsoever source it may present itself, and 
suspending its verdict whenever facts or circum- 
stances material to the integrity of its deliver- 
ance are wanting ! How many questions of po- 
litical econoniy, legal interpretation, polemical 
casuistry, social improvement and advancement, 
and national policy, as well as of facts and phe- 
nomena of deep scientific import, are left open 
and unsettled from age to age, to be renewedly 
agitated and discussed by each successive genera- 
tion, for want of the infusion into the arguments 



Errors and Defects, 189 

by whicli they are supported or denied of clear 
conceptions, sound inductions and just conclu- 
sions. 

As one of the numerous illustrations wliicli 
might be adduced of this practical inability or 
indisposition to fathom to the depths questions, 
even of general interest and importance, the 
past history and the present condition of the 
alleged science of phrenology may be cited. If 
the pretensions of that science are founded on 
truth — based upon a sound, exhaustive and com- 
prehensive induction of facts, and capable of prac- 
tical application in the formation or interpreta* 
tion of character and its results in the actual con- 
duct of life — then it should be assigned a prom- 
inent place, not only in the philosophy of the 
human mind, but in the education of the rising 
generation. U^ on the other hand, its premises 
are false, its i'easonings inconsequential and its 
conclusions baseless, uncertain, vague and value- 
less for all practical purposes, its principles and 
theories should be promptly and authoritatively 
consigned to the same oblivion which has long 
entombed the ancient cabala of judicial astrology. 
Now the most abundant materials have long ex- 
isted for the definite solution of this problem on 
clear and incontrovertible grounds. While, on the 



1 90 First Principles of Popular Education, 

one hand, it is systematically and almost univers- 
ally excluded from every course of instruction, 
on tlie other, its fundamental principles find a 
deep and permanent tliougli perhaps unacknowl- 
edged lodgment in many of the ripest intellects 
and acutest reasoners of the age. Many of the 
most eminent educationists of Europe and Amer- 
ica, many of the most distinguished professional 
men in every department of active life have prac- 
tically governed themselves Ly its teachings and 
shaped their instructions by its theories, without 
professedly incorporating them into their intel- 
lectual and moral discipline, or proposing their 
adoption as an elementary portion of the text- 
books of their science. Not only the highest in- 
terests of education, but the general welfare of 
humanity, the advancement of science, as well as 
the culture of the heart and the management of 
the life, sound philosophy as well as true religion, 
demand the definitive settlement of this long- 
pending question, and in a manner satisfactory 
and conclusive to the humblesf; equally with the 
most enlightened understandings. So with a 
great variety of other theories, equally important 
and equally undetermined : the morality and ex- 
pediency of slavery; the principles of free trade 
or a protective tariff; the fundamental questions 



Errors and Defects, 191 

of political economy ; the true functions and prop- 
er limits of government ; the relation and con- 
nection of Church and State ; religious toleration ; 
freedom of speech and of the press ; and, in short, 
all those religious, moral, political and social spec- 
ulations which float from century to century and 
from age to age down the tide of time, to be con- 
tinually transmitted, with increased intricacy and 
embarrassment, from generation to generation. 
The human intellect is so constituted that a 
proper cultivation of its various faculties might 
unquestionably enable it to bring to bear upon 
all these subjects the clear light of demonstrative 
truth, whether originating in its own exhaustive 
reasonings, or reflected, with a full appreciation 
of its .successive processes and results, from the 
operation of other minds. In all ages and at all 
times, the intellectual guides of humanity, " the 
crowned kings of thought," each from his own 
Olympian hill, have harmoniously responded to 
the utterance of those oracular truths, the practi- 
cal application of which, to the most complicated 
problems of life, unlooses the " Gordian knots " 
of sophistry and error. It needs only that the 
mass of mind occupying the plains and the val- 
leys, the highways and the by-ways of the world, 
be equally enlightened and disciplined to avail 



192 First Principles of Popular Education, 



itself of its birthright, and like a giant awaken- 
ing from its long slumber, shake off the mental 
and moral incubus which has so long weighed 
down, its mighty energies. 

It has also not unfrequently been observed, 
although this may seem to conflict in some meas- 
ure with the suggestions in which I have already 
indulged, that too large a proportion of the time 
usually appropriated to intellectual instruction 
is devoted to the purely elementary branches of 
study, to the exclusion of their practical applica- 
tions in the more advanced courses. The funda- 
mental principles and essential rules of English 
Grammar, Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry 
may, I feel confident, under a proper and judi- 
cious course of instruction, be thoroughly master- 
ed by any pupil of ordinary intelligence and com- 
prehension, in a much shorter period than that 
usually required in our public schools ; and the 
time now, as I conceive, unprofitably expended in 
going over the same ground from time to time, 
in the form of reviews, or additional illustrations 
of the same principles slightly varied in form, 
might, perhaps, be better improved by transfer- 
ring the illustrations and applications of the 
principles already fixed in the mind to a higher 
range of subjects requiring new combinations of 



Errors and Defects. 193 

thouglit, and bringing into action other faculties 
and powers of the intellect. This consideration 
derives additional force from the multiplicity of 
sciences now pressing upon the attention of the 
student, compared with the restricted range which 
formerly existed, rendering too protracted a devo- 
tion to the minute details of each, inconsistent 
with that clearly defined and practical acquaint- 
ance with all, which the demands of the age im- 
peratively require. 

Instances are by no means rare, in almost ev- 
ery community, of creditable and praiseworthy 
endowments in the mathematics and English 
Grammar and their cognate branches, without 
the slightest ability to carry out their principles 
to any of the ordinary purposes of life — without 
any intelligent conception of the great " well of 
English, undefiled," embodied in the noble crea- 
tions of modern literature — of the treasures of 
art and science by which we, of the present age, 
are surrounded — of the monitory lessons of an- 
cient and modern history — or even of the govern- 
ment and institutions of the country in which we 
dwell. That time which should have been spent 
in attaining a general and familiar acquaintance 
with the entire range of the sciences, bestowing 
on each only that amount and degree of labor 

I 



1 94 First Principles of Popular Education, 



and study requisite to its clear ■anderstandingy 
and passing on in succession to tlie conquest and 
occupancy of more advanced ground, lias been in- 
judiciously monopolized by a portion only of 
those elementary branches which, however essen- 
tial in themselves as constituent parts of a full 
course, are of little or no value independently of 
that course. That which might have been the 
highest wisdom in the middle of the last century, 
or even at the commencement of the present, be- 
comes utterly inapplicable to the changed condi- 
tion of literary and scientific knowledge at the 
present day. 

In the higher institutions of learning, also, a 
more generous and practical course of instruction 
seems to be demanded by the exigencies of the 
age and the rapid advancement of knowledge. 
These institutions, not to any considerable extent 
participating in the guidance or patronage of the 
State, and laboring under the many disadvantages 
and embarrassments inseparable from private or 
corporate management — fettered by restrictions 
and usages, and cramped by forms and precedents 
derived from past ages — are comparatively unaf- 
fected by that outside . pressure of public senti- 
ment and those urgent requirements of progress- 
ive civilization which are so constantly brought 



Errors and Defects. 195 

to bear upon tlie more elementary agencies of 
popular education. They are eminently conserv- 
ative in their spirit, but conservative, it is greatly 
to be apprehended, together with those promi- 
nent features that constitute their high claims to 
the public confidence and regard, of much that is 
worthless and obsolete, if not absolutely perni- 
cious. Too disproportionate a share of the brief 
period allotted to the course of instruction is de- 
voted to purely mathematical culture and the 
study of the ancient languages — too little time is 
given to the mastery and application of those ex- 
tensive branches of modern science, literature and 
art, which " come home to the business and tjie 
bosoms " of the world of the nineteenth century. 
Ample scope should doubtless be afibrded to 
both, and neither should be passed over super- 
ficially or empirically. 

To remedy these defects, universities, in fact as 
well as in name, should be organized and liberal- 
ty endowed at each great centre of scholastic re- 
sort — professorships of each distinct department 
of learning established and maintained, and every 
facility afforded for the acquirement of a com- 
plete and finished education, adapted to the spe- 
cific wants and future destination of each pupil. 
These institutions, as I have already intimated. 



1 96 First Principles of Popular Education, 

should be provided and efficiently sustained by 
the State, and placed under the general and spe- 
cial supervision of its ablest and most enlighten- 
ed citizens. What nobler or higher function has 
the State than such a preparation of its future 
citizens for extended usefulness, for scientific dis- 
covery and research, for literary and artistic ex- 
cellence, for the indefinite enhancement and diffu- 
sion of material wealth, for the prosecution of 
those great enterprises which enrich and aggran- 
dize communities and nations, for the perpetua- 
tion of peace and concord at home and abroad, 
for the dispersion of ignorance, error, pauperism 
and crime, and the prevalence of knowledge, jus- 
tice and Christianity ? 

The great and leading object of all true educa- 
tion is to prepare its recipient for a life of use- 
fulness, integrity, honor and happiness here, and 
for the higher scenes and associations which await 
him in that unending future to which all our 
hopes and aspirations tend. To this end we 
store the mind with varied knowledge, that it 
may comprehend all those instrumentalities and 
agencies which may be brought to bear upon the 
pursuits of life— that it may take cognizance of 
its own mysterious and unfathomable nature, and 
exert its various and wonderful faculties, each in 



Errors and Defects, 197 



its own appropriate sphere, for tlie advancement 
of its own well-being, and the benefit and welfare 
of those within the circle of its influence — that it 
may avail itself of the ample experience of the 
past, through the thoughts, actions, trials and 
sufferings of the great, the wise and the good, as 
well as of the erring, the guilty and the criminal 
— that it may gather to itself, and assimilate and 
appropriate to its own individual being, all that 
the external universe has of beauty, sublimity, 
magnificence and harmony — all that the human 
mind has uttered of grandeur, melody, wisdom 
and power — all that human art has moulded into 
imperishable forms of loveliness and grace — all 
that science in its spacious domains has to bestow 
— all that the passing incidents of the busy world, 
in their manifold combinations of the " still, sad 
music of humanity," have to teach. To this end 
we cultivate the spiritual and immortal nature, 
that it may know its origin, worship and adore 
its great Creator, learn his will, bow to his be- 
hests, trust in his goodness, confide in his assur- 
ances of mercy and love, reverently and believ- 
ingly accept his revelations of himself to humani- 
ty, " do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly be- 
fore God." Have our institutions of learning, 
our common schools, academies, colleges and uni- 



198 First Principles of Popular Education, 

versities as yet been enabled adequately to real- 
ize in tlieir various courses of instruction, in their 
bountiful provisions for tlie intellectual and moral 
culture of tlie young, these great and essential 
ideals \ Has it been — is it now— tlieir ambition, 
tlieir end, tlieir aim, their "exceeding great re- 
ward," to educate their pupils for eternity — to 
imbue them in the early spring-time of their ex- 
istence, while their minds and hearts are yet open 
to every impression, with the spirit and the pre- 
cepts of Christianity, to form their characters, ma- 
ture their principles, confirm their habits, and 
direct their conduct in accordance with the dic- 
tates of that wisdom which " cometh from above," 
and which alone can guide us and them safely 
and unharmed through the countless perils of 
"this present evil world?" Are they preparing 
for the broad arena of human life — with its mul- 
tifarious and diversified interests — men and 
women who shall go forth to adorn its various 
walks, to add to the sum of human happiness 
and contract the circle of human misery, and to 
diffuse around them on every hand the knowl- 
edge and genial elements of goodness and virtue 
and truth and love ? Or are they sending forth 
mere scholars, with varied mental accomplish- 
ments, but destitute alike of practical skill and 



Errors and Defects, 199 



that higli moral and spiritual culture which are 
indispensable to true worth and greatness?. Do 
they so discipline the intellectual faculties of 
their pupils as to enable them, from their own re- 
sources, to separate the pure gold of truth from 
the dross of error in which it may be imbedded, 
to eliminate it from the specious fallacies with 
which it may be surrounded ; accurately and log- 
ically to trace effects, however remote and appar- 
ently unconnected, to their causes ; skillfully to 
combine, compare and analyze jvith strict refer- 
ence to first principles and undeniable premises % 
Or do they content themselves with the authori- 
tative communication of results satisfactorily de- 
duced by others, the most complete mastery of 
which, while it may confer a show of erudition, 
strengthens only the memory, and substitutes a 
superficial gloss of learning for the real power of 
true science % And finally, do they conduct those 
committed to their charge, by a wise gradation, 
through the fundamental principles and varied 
applications of the exact sciences, over the broad 
and inviting fields of natural history and philoso- 
phy, to the more elevated and nobler domains of 
genius, imagination, poetry, art, metaphysical re- 
search and dee]3 theological lore — regions where 
all the higher faculties of the human mind may 



200 First Principles of Popular Education, 

" bathe in floods of living light," and plume their 
energies and strengthen their pinions in those 
" green pastures," and by the side of those ^^ still 
waters," which, like Siloa's gentle stream, " flow 
fast by the oracles of God ?" 

Grievously do they err, sadly and lamentably 
do they misconceive the objects and purposes of 
that "generous culture" which constitutes all 
true education, who would exclude from its prop- 
er scope those "thoughts that breathe, and words 
that burn," whigh were conceived and spoken in 
musical accents by " the world's gray fathers " of 
Greece and Rome, of Palestine and Persia and 
Egypt, in the first faint dawn of civilization, and 
in the bracing, invigorating mountain air of its 
morning fragrance and beauty. Inexcusably, un- 
justifiably do they " cramp, cabin and confine " 
the divine faculties of the human mind, who 
would deprive it of ample and free communion 
with those master-spirits of the deathless life and 
song, who in all ages have cast the radiant glo- 
ries of their rapt imaginations 

" Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 
Which men call earth, and with low-thoughted care, 
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being." 

Let it not be said that these excursions into the 
purer and rarer atmosphere of genius and fancy 



Errors and Dejects, 201 

— these flights " far in the unapparent " — unfit us 
for the practical duties and stern requirements of 
this "working-day world." As well may you pro- 
scribe " Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep " for 
its thick-coming fancies, its wondrous revelations 
^of beauty, its evanescent glimpses of the soul's 
transcendent greatness, " unclogged with baser 
matter," its vast absorption of that mere pittance, 
at best, of time afforded us for the great task of 
existence. Both our sleeping and waking fancies 
invigorate, strengthen and renew the mind, lift it 
from the stifling vapors of flesh and sense, replen- 
ish it with the pure elements of its native atmos- 
phere, and send it down to its appointed pilgrim- 
age of earthly struggle and suffering refreshed 
and reanimated for the stern battle of life. " They 
also serve, who only stand and wait." 

" From the mount 
Of high transfiguration, we come down 
Into our common life-time, as the diver 
Breathes upper air, a moment, e'er he plunges. 
And by mere virtue of that moment, lives 
In breathless caverns deep and dark." 

And who that has ranged over the wilderness 
of sweets, the wide, extended plains of knowledge, 
the lofty summits of profoundest wisdom which 
the literature of ancient and modern times spreads 

12 



2 o 2 First Principles of Popular Education, 



out to view — -who tliat lias lingered over the 
classic pages of Homer and Virgil, of Plato and 
Cicero, of Tasso and Dante, and bathed his soul 
in the rich poetry and vigorous prose of Shake- 
speare and Milton and Spenser, of Cowper and 
Wordsworth, of Bryant and Longfellow and 
Irving, and all that immortal brotherhood of 
genius, whose greatness " posterity will not will- 
ingly let die" — who that has stood before the 
deathless creations of those heavenly-minded ar- 
tists of the olden time, who have clothed the tem- 
ples and palaces of Greece and the vaulted ca- 
thedrals and storied ruins of Italy with a glory 
and a power which modern genius has vainly 
essayed to rival, has not felt in the utmost re- 
cesses of his being that a " thing of beauty is," in- 
deed, " a joy forever." Who that has listened to 
th^se immortal strains of melody and harmony, 
those bursts of glorified sound which, under the 
hands or animated by the spirits of the great 
composers of ancient and modern times, fill air, 
earth and heaven with the prolonged echoes of 
their lofty and spirit-stirring cadences, is not 
more deeply conscious of his heavenly origin, of 
the unspeakable greatness, the awful sanctity, the 
tremendous responsibilities of his mysterious be- 
ing % Are we, then, justifiable in dismissing the 



Errors and Defects. 203 

you til of our land from our lialls of learning with 
these immense capacities of refined enjoyments, 
these noble channels of the soul's activity, these 
abiding testimonials of its innate grandeur unde- 
veloped and uncultivated ? 

The times in which we live, too, and the spirit 
of the age in which our lots have been cast, are 
fertile in great events — great discoveries in science 
and the arts, great revolutions of opinions and 
principles, great movements of the popular mind 
in every direction, great premonitions of the possi- 
ble future. Grave questions of political and social 
economy, involving results of immense magnitude 
and importance, are agitating the deepest and pro- 
foundest intellects of our community ; principles 
which underlie the very foundations of govern- 
ment and society are discussed in every quarter ; 
vast physical changes are taking place over the 
surface of great continents, involving the destinies 
and the welfare of unborn nations, and elements 
are at work which in their development may 
and must give a new aspect to the entire civiliza- 
tion of the world. Are our institutions of learn- 
ing of every grade taking heed of these tidal 
movements of the great heart of humanity, pre- 
paring their pupils for active, intelligent and ear- 
nest participation in the ebbings and flowings of 



204 First Principles of Popular Education, 

tliat miglity current whicli is thus precipitating 
its waters over the surface of society ? Are tbey 
sending out pupils fitted at all points to grapple 
with the gigantic enterprises of the age, to direct 
its energies, to impress upon it the stamp of great- 
ness and power, to elevate and dignify its aspira- 
tions, and to restrain its excesses ? 

These are, in my judgment, serious and practi- 
cal questions, entering, as I conceive, into the very 
essence of Education, involving that which alone 
should constitute its distinctive end and aim, the 
formation of character, the establishment of prin- 
ciples, the cultivation of every rational faculty of 
our being, and the right direction of the conduct 
and the life. In so far as our own systems of in- 
struction, public or private, fail in the accomplish- 
ment of these high purposes — in so far as they 
leave a single intelligent human being destitute 
of that culture which his nature and the require- 
ments of society demand — in so far as they bestow 
a merely superficial or imperfect development of 
the intellectual, moral and religious faculties, or 
fail to confer upon each the power of indefinite 
self improvement in whatsoever direction the ex- 
igencies of life or its own enlightened impulses 
may prompt — in so far as they neglect to lay open 
before the ingenuous minds of those committed 



Errors and Defects, 205 

to tlieir charge tlie ample treasures of ancient 
and modern literature, science and art in every 
department where the ethereal footsteps of genius 
and talent have passed — and in so far as they fall 
behind the awakened spirit of the age, and shut 
their eyes and ears against its visible and audible 
manifestations of power — to this extent they will 
have failed to realize the full import and to meet 
the full responsibilities of the high mission with 
which they have been charged. 

I have thus, with great frankness and plain- 
ness, indicated some of those shortcomings and 
defects which have appeared to me to pervade 
our systems of public instruction and popular ed- 
ucation. I trust that in my cursory and desulto- 
ry treatment of this important topic I have not 
been actuated by a captious or a cynical spirit of 
fault-finding and censure. To me this great in- 
terest of universal education is sacred and very 
dear. I bless God for its wide diffusion and rapid 
advancement, for its numerous and varied ex- 
cellencies, for the deep hold it possesses upon 
the public mind, for the great prospects for the 
future which it involves, for the glory it reflects 
upon our past history, and for the innumerable 
and inestimable benefits it has conferred upon 
our favored and happy land. I am deeply grate- 



2o6 First Principles of Popular Education, 

fill for tlie opportunities wHcli have been afford- 
ed me, for so long a period of time, to contribute 
to the full extent of my humble abilities to the 
upbuilding of its stately superstructure, and to 
watch over its growth and progress as it has 
gradually and steadily reared its proud propor- 
tions in our midst. I earnestly desire its im- 
provement and expansion. I look not for perfec- 
tion in any thing earthly, nor, were it otherwise, 
have I the vanity or the presumption to hope to 
be able to point out the direction from which its 
attainment might be expected. But, confiding 
in that indomitable spirit of progress which is 
the marked characteristic of the age in which we 
live, trusting with an abiding and unswerving 
faith in the might of that great Idea which filled 
the souls of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, 
the indissoluble connection of EELiGioisr and Ed- 
ucation — the threefold cord of Intelligence, 
Freedom and Cheistianity — I venture to look 
forward in the future to the full realization of 
the rich promise of the past, to the continued 
improvement and indefinite enlargement of that 
noble system on which all our hopes for the per- 
petuity of our free institutions rest, to the sound, 
complete and Cheistian education of every child 
of the Eepublic. I look upon our Common 



Errors and Defects. 207 

Schools, Academies, Colleges and other institu- 
tions of learning, both public and private, as the 
sheet-anchors of our prosperity and greatness, 
and, as such, I would cherish, strengthen, consoli- 
date and improve them to their utmost possible 
capacity. Innumerable and unavoidable contin- 
gencies may lay waste our fertile fields, desolate 
our happy homes, prostrate our commerce, destroy 
our manufactures, paralyze our industry and dry 
up the springs of our enterprise, but here, in these 
consecrated halls and amid these quiet shades, 
from these Temples of learning, rearing their 
stately fronts in every quarter of our crowded 
cities, adorning and beautifying every village and 
hamlet of our land, and diffasing their beneficent 
and happy influences over every home, shall go 
forth those recuperative energies and that recrea- 
tive power which shall again cause the " wilder- 
ness and the desolate places to bud and blossom 
as the rose." 

" Change, wide and deep, and silently performed, 
This land shall witness : and, as days roU on, 
Earth's universal frame shall feel the effect, 
Even till the smallest habitable rock 
Beaten by lonely billows ; hear the songs 
Of humanized society, and bloom 
With civil arts, that send their fragrance forth, 
A grateful tribute to all-ruling Heaven. 



208 First Principles of Popular Education, 

From culture unexclusively bestowed 

On this, our noble race, in freedom born. 

Expect these mighty issues : from the pains 

And faithful care of unambitious schools, 

Instructing simple childhood's ready ear. 

Thence look for these magnificent results !" 




CHAPTEE XIV. 



SCIENCE AND EEVELATION — SANCTIONS AND MOTIVES 
PUBLIC OPINION. 

THE time Las been, and that at no great (lis. 
tance from our own days, when the multi- 
plied discoveries of science in the natural and 
physical world, and the researches and specula- 
tions of philosophers in the world of mind, were 
deemed alike at variance with the paramount 
authority of Eevelation, and as at best an at- 
tempt on the part of presumptuous and mis- 
guided men to attain to the knowledge of that 
which transcended the limited prerogative of hu- 
manity. It seems now, however, to be conceded 
that true science, whether physical, intellectual or 
moral, can not, by any possibility, be at variance 
with Eevelation in any of its forms. Truth is 
uniformly and necessarily consistent with itself 
While, therefore, the imperative dictates of sound 
philosophy command us to reject any and every 
hypothesis of science, ethics or morality which 
contradicts the authentic testimony of Eevela- 



2 1 o First Principles of Popular Education, 



tion, a reverential and sacred regard for truth 
and nature calls upon us in an equally authorita- 
tive manner to reject such an arbitrary interpre- 
tation of the latter as shall be found unwarranted 
by reason, observation and experience, and con- 
tradictory to the direct evidence of our unper- 
verted senses. Interpretation only is to be sub- 
jected to this discriminating process, for an en- 
lightened and attentive investigation and exam- 
ination of the respective claims of natural and 
revealed knowledge will show them to be uni- 
formly and invariably consistent and harmonious 
in every essential requisite. The imperishable 
tablets of the Christian faith can never be mar- 
red or dimmed by contact with true science, 
sound philosophy, and advancing civilization and 
knowledge. On the contrary, the law and the 
testimony there inscribed by the finger of Al- 
mighty Wisdom will become the more legible, 
luminous and clear in proportion as they are 
subjected to the tests of an expanded and en- 
lightened observation — the practical deductions 
slowly evolved from the experience of ages — and 
the progressive discoveries in science and the 
arts. They have nothing to fear from the utmost 
advancement of human wisdom and improve- 
ment ; and it is when the pestilential miasma of 



Science and Revelation, 2 1 1 



passion, guilt and crime sheds its baleful influ- 
ence over the human intellect, obscuring its per- 
ceptions, blighting its energies and perverting its 
developments, that we are called upon to draw 
the line of demarkation between Religion and 
Science, Reason and Revelation, the God of the 
Bible, and the Author and Disposer of Nature. 

When we look abroad upon the troubled 
ocean of human life and witness the constant and 
restless agitation of its surface, strewn with the 
melancholy wrecks of ages — now dashing into 
fragments many a noble and stately bark, freight- 
ed with the highest hopes of nations, communi- 
ties and individuals, now whelming under its im- 
petuous and undiscerning billows the nameless, 
humble and obscure voyager upon the trackless 
path — experiencing in its ceaseless commotion 
apparently no interval of repose and no relaxa- 
tion of its mad impulses, we may well ask our- 
selves what power short of Omnipotence can con- 
trol its excited and turbulent career, or say to its 
rebellious fury, " Thus far shalt thou come, but no 
farther ; and here shall thy proud waves be stay- 
ed." There is a point beyond which philosojDhy 
can not penetrate ; where reason and intellect and 
all the faculties of the human mind are powerless 
and impotent, and where nothing remains to the 



212 First Principles of Popular Education, 

loftiest genius, in common witli the humblest and 
most uninstructed range of thought, but to won- 
der, to adore and submit. Even the human 
mind, that most stupendous workmanship of In- 
finite Wisdom, that emanation from the Divine 
essence, has its laws which it can not disobey if it 
would, its limitations which it may not overpass. 
There are mysteries connected with our existence 
here which eternity alone can solve — relations to 
which flesh and blood can never penetrate — ^links 
which earthly vision can never discover — causes 
beyond the cognizance of mortality — and effects 
incapable of being fully traced by any intellectual 
powers conferred on mere humanity. It is idle, 
it is worse than idle, it is impious, to indulge the 
vain fancy that any conceivable advancement of 
the race in wisdom, any possible condition of so- 
ciety, or any attainable purification of the grosser 
elements of our nature can suffice to perfect our 
knowledge of the moral government of the world 
in which we live or initiate us into the grand 
scope and ultimate designs of the Creator in the 
multifarious and complicated labyrinths of hu- 
man existence and destiny. Nor is it in any de- 
gree necessary for our happiness here, or our wel- 
fare hereafter, that the inscrutable records of the 
Book of Fate should be exposed to our view. It 



Sanctions and Motives. 2 1 3 

requires but a brief experience to enable us to 
comprehend the existence and become aware, in 
some small degree at least, of the influence of 
those elementary laws of being which circum- 
scribe us on every hand, to learn that it is only 
by a general obedience to these laws that we can 
secure an exemption from the formidable evils 
which encompass us, and to be assured that by 
a systematic and habitual neglect, or a gross in- 
fraction of any of these laws, we incur a penalty 
proportioned to our departure from their require- 
ments. It is only necessary to extend and faith- 
fully apply the principle thus deduced from our 
ordinary experience, to enable us to arrive at the 
more important but not less obvious inference 
that the laws thus prescribed are uniform in tlieir 
operation, invariable in their nature, unyielding 
and inflexible in their demands upon our obedi- 
ence, and admitting of no departure from their 
requisitions, however inconsiderable, without ex- 
acting the penalty. But this is a conclusion by 
no means intuitively or without difficulty attain- 
ed in practice, under the most auspicious and fa- 
vorable circumstances incident to humanity. The 
records of history, and the process which passes 
within our own breasts as leaf after leaf of the 
volume of existence is unfolded to our perception, 



214 First Principles of Popular Education, 

demonstrate that tlie lessons wMcli "bring with 
them increased wisdom, increased knowledge of 
the human heart, increasing happiness and pro- 
gressive virtue, are slowly and painfully evolved 
from the shattered wrecks of the past, from the 
consequences of manifold and' long aberration 
from rectitude, from incessant observation and 
combinations of the diversified elements of ex- 
perience^ and from a bitter novitiate in the stern 
school of adversity and suffering. Of the hun- 
dreds of millions of human beings whom each 
successive generation as it passes on sends " to 
take their places in the halls of death," how com- 
paratively few is the number of those who have 
been able to solve the deep problem of their own 
existence and being, or to ascertain and apply the 
unvarying and necessary connection between the 
laws of nature and of its Creator, and the enjoy- 
ment of happiness ! How vast the number of 
those who have ignorantly or presumptuously, 
but constantly, violated those laws, and paid the 
bitter penalty in wretchedness and misery, phys- 
ical and, mental, protracted, with occasional and 
evanescent intervals of comparative enjoyment, to 
the verge of a longer or shorter career ! "We are 
unwilling to concede, at least to the extent claim- 
ed by some severe moralists of every age, the ex- 



Sanctions and Motives, 215 

istence of those moral and intellectual phenomena 
which have afforded frequent and mournful themes 
for the indignant reprobation of the wise and good 
— where the path of duty has been plainly ap- 
prehended, the guilt and the consequences of a 
departure from it clearly perceived, and yet that 
departure deliberately determined upon and per- 
sisted in with a full knowledge that happiness 
and peace, innocency and virtue were irrevocably 
renounced. We are disposed to view the melan- 
choly obliquities of our common nature in a more 
favorable and charitable light, and to attribute 
the lamentable dereliction from its original puri- 
ty, which the world has ever witnessed and which 
succeeding ages will probably long continue to 
witness, rather to ignorance of the fundamental 
laws of being than to a bold and enlightened 
but most presumptuous defiance of those laws, 
with a clear apprehension of the inevitable conse- 
quences. It can not be, that a reasoning, intelli- 
gent and well-balanced mind should voluntarily 
choose to descend from the proud eminence of 
virtuous innocence to the lowest depths of profli- 
gacy and vice ; or that a human being, endowed 
with the most perfect physical organization, and 
painfully alive to the nicest sensibilities of its 
nature, should not only look with indifference 



2 1 6 First Principles of Popular Education. 

upon a life of protracted suffering, opening no 
vista of hope and admitting of no alleviation or 
solace this side of eternity, but should, as the re- 
sult of his unbiased will and free choice, link his 
destiny to such a career of ignominy and degra- 
dation — so withering, so hopeless, and so accursed 
by God and by man. It is believed that no one 
can discover, upon the most faithful examination 
of his own mental and moral faculties, any well- 
founded conception, any feeling or emotion cor- 
responding to a principle so revolting to humani- 
ty, any law of his own being from which he can 
legitimately infer a result so deplorable. The 
Author of our being has indeed rendered such a 
combination morally impossible. It would be in 
palpable and direct opposition to all we know, 
or can upon rational principles conceive, of infi- 
nite benevolence and wisdom, that seeks only the 
highest good of all its subjects; it would present 
an anomaly in the moral machinery of the uni- 
verse — the intermingling of elements in our com- 
mon nature in irreconcilable enmity with each 
other, governed by contradictory laws and lead- 
ing to the most opposite and discordant results. 
That " the heart of man is deceitful above all 
things, and desperately wicked;" that its every 
" imagination is evil, and that continually," the 



Sanctions and Motives, 217 

experience of all ages, and the solemn declara- 
tions of revelation coincide in establishing ; but 
we may surely indulge in the supposition that 
the depravity and wickedness which has uniform- 
ly characterized mankind has not been of that 
deep dye which fully comprehended and delib- 
erately rejected its own highest happiness, which 
clearly discerned the inevitable retributions of 
disobedience, and yet " rushed upon the thick 
bosses of the buckler " of the avenger. 

We are aware that this is in some measure 
debatable ground ; but we are also aware that 
its boundaries have not been so strictly defined 
as to preclude us from the effort to reclaim mil- 
lions of wanderers from the heavy imputation of 
apostasy from the pale of humanity. While we 
can not but lament the deplorable infatuation 
which has deprived the great mass of our fellow- 
men in every age of the natural heritage of hap- 
piness bestowed upon them at their birth, and 
condemned them to misery and remorse and the 
complicated ills of a degenerate world, we may at 
least be permitted to indulge the consoling re- 
flection that this severe and calamitous portion 
was not the necessary result of a nature altogeth- 
er perverted from its original purity, and wholly 
incapable of producing less bitter fruits. " The 

K 



2 1 8 First Principles of Popular Education. 



Eden of liuman nature," says an eloquent writer 
of our own day, " has, indeed, long been trampled 
down and desolated, and storms waste it con- 
tinually; nevertlieless the soil is still rich with 
the germ of its pristine beauty, the colors of 
Paradise are sleeping in the clods, and a little 
favor, a little protection and a little culture shall 
show what once was there." A beautiful and 
ennobling sentiment, and well worthy of all ac- 
ceptation. Much of the harsh censoriousness 
with which human frailty, ignorance and delu- 
sion has at all times been visited by those whom 
a more fortunate and enviable mental organiza- 
tion has exempted from temptation or crime 
might well have been spared, had this elevated 
and catholic spirit of Christian benevolence pre- 
vailed more generally. In our investigations into 
the motives, conduct and character of our fellow- 
men, it is much wiser and far less dangerous to 
err on the side of charity and mercy than their 
opposites; and certainly, if it be our aim to ad- 
vance the standard of intellectual and moral im- 
provement, and to elevate the condition of our 
species, it is equally unphilosophical and unjust 
to assume in the outset that the task is hopeless 
and impracticable. 

The conclusion to which these observations 



Sa7ictions and Motives, 21^ 



tend is obvious. Man is susceptible, in his own 
proper nature, of the highest intelligence, virtue 
and consequent happiness which was originally 
bestowed upon humanity by creative wisdom and 
benevolence ; but by reason of his peculiar men- 
tal and moral organization, adapted to progress- 
ive advancement but left free to work out its 
own destiny, and in consequence of the powerful 
and constantly accumulating influences which 
surround him from infancy, he contracts insensi- 
bly, and at a very early period, the tendency to 
go astray from that very narrow and restricted 
path of duty. The impulse which hurries him 
on from one successive step to another of error, 
guilt and retribution, is seldom if ever the result 
of his own deliberate choice and enlightened 
knowledge of the laws of being, and the conse- 
quences of their infringement. He is impelled 
by the operation of strong and unchecked pas- 
sions, the consequences of a neglected or per- 
verted education in some of its numerous forms ; 
and, through ignorance in a great measure of his 
own nature, capacities and destination, inability 
to withstand temptation, and the presence and 
influence of a great variety of powerful exter- 
nal and internal impulses, the voice of reason, 
judgment, and often of conscience, is gradually 



2 2 o First Principles of Popular Education, 



and imperceptibly stifled; the intellectual func- 
tions transmit erroneous information ; tlie moral 
faculties lose tlieir ascendancy, and tlie empire of 
tlie mind degenerates into hopeless anarchy and 
inextricable confusion. 

From this view of the subject the immense 
importance of an enlightened and extended sys- 
tem of physical, intellectual and moral education 
is obvious ; one by which, at the earliest period 
when such knowledge can be comprehended, we 
may be accurately informed of the peculiar con- 
stitution of our nature, its powers and faculties, 
their modes of manifestation and their various 
operation, whether in accordance with their own 
innate force or influenced by the external world 
of matter or of mind. 

Upon this broad and comprehensive founda- 
tion a superstructure may be reared of solid and 
durable materials, fitted to resist the incessant 
elemental warfare of the passions, and providing 
an impregnable rampart against every hostile at- 
tack. If it be true that the great mass of crime 
and wretchedness, of suffering and of woe, with 
which the world is filled may be traced directly 
or remotely to ignorance ; if it be also true that 
all the happiness and enjoyment of which human- 
ity is susceptible proceed from and are the in- 



Ptidlic Opinion. 221 

variable and necessary result of an adherence to 
the laws impressed by the Creator upon all the 
workmanship of his hands ; and if, moreover, such 
an adherence is entirely practicable and attaina- 
ble and becomes instantly its own reward, con- 
siderations of the most solemn and momentous 
import, as well to ourselves as to the race to 
which we belong, and involving the welfare of 
the present and future generations, impel us to 
begin the great work of an education which shall 
be commensurate with our high nature and des- 
tiny, ^and w^hich shall enable us so to live as to 
secure the utmost happiness of which our being 
is capable. 

It may with safety be admitted that a well- 
regulated and well-directed public opinion is a 
more efficient agent in the work of education 
than all the systems of instruction which have 
been or can be devised in its absence. If the 
prevailing tendency of the age and of the commu- 
nity in which we live be favorable to a pro- 
gressive advancement in wisdom and virtue and 
knowledge — as the basis of the only sound philos- 
ophy of human life, as worthy of a general con- 
centration of all its interests, passions and feel- 
ings — the mind and the heart will insensibly and 
involuntarily take that direction, the moral pow- 



2 22 First Principles of Popular Education, 

ers will assume their proper preponderance, and 
all tlie various faculties of our nature will har- 
moniously co-operate in their respective spheres. 
If, on the other hand, the attainment of wealth, 
the pursuit of pleasure, the struggle for power, 
for distinction and for worldly applause are 
found to be the principal objects of ambition, 
and to engross the energies of the mass of man- 
kind, the most perfect system of education will 
fail in accomplishing any permanent results, or in 
securing any general adoption. 

It is but too true that the great obstacle to 
the successful prosecution of the most thoroughly 
digested and well-considered system of popular 
education is found in the powerful influence of 
a perverted public opinion operating with an ir- 
resistible force upon the most striking tendencies 
and pursuits of life. It is in vain to impress 
upon the mind, amid the congenial associations 
of youth, innocence and happiness, the purest doc- 
trines of the most elevated philosophy, if, when 
the hallowed sanctuary of home is overpassed, 
and the delightful groves of the academy left be- 
hind, the sober realities of life are discovered to 
be a compound of interested selfishness, unwor- 
thy aspirations and unchastened ambition, while 
nobler views, nobler efforts and a more exalted 



Public Opinion. 223 



benevolence seldom find a congenial atmosphere 
where they may bud, blossom and expand. It is 
in vain to expatiate upon the beauty and the 
sublimity of moral excellence, v^hile the world's 
ready and unbounded applause awaits the suc- 
cessful results of bold effrontery, low duplicity, 
persevering cunning and well -dissembled craft. 
The highest order of intellect, combined with the 
sternest moral and religious principles, can rarely 
mingle with the baser elements of the busy world 
and escape the deep contamination of the contact. 
There are few circumstances and conditions in 
life in which we can render ourselves to any ex- 
tent independent of the powerful influence which 
the opinions of those around us and the public at 
large exert upon our conduct. There is a prin- 
ciple deeply implanted in our nature which com- 
pels us uniformly to regulate even our most 
trivial actions, and gradually to form our char- 
acter and mould our sentiments, by the standard 
which prevails in the community to which we 
belong. History affords ample evidence of the 
presence and the effects of this all - pervading 
power, and hence the formidable obstacles which 
have in all ages been interposed to the progress 
of those great reforms in religion, moral and po- 
litical economy and science, which from time to 



224 First Principles of Popular Education, 

time have agitated society to its centre. The 
minds and actions of men so insensibly assimilate 
to each other, and so imperceptibly is the power 
of public opinion concentrated around the estab- 
lished institutions, modes of thinking and ordi- 
nary pursuits of the day, that the slightest inno- 
vation upon the magic circle drawn by habit, by 
custom and by association, excites at once the 
astonishment and indignation of all, and places 
the daring offender beyond the pale of pardon. 

It is needless to adduce instances abounding 
in the annals of our race of the melancholy ef- 
fects of this potent influence. All of the eleva- 
tion to which the morals, the intellect and the 
refinement of the present age has attained, has 
been imparted to it by the slow and painful de- 
velopment of principles promulgated in the face 
of danger and often of death, and maintained in 
the midst of a fiery struggle against principalities 
and powers and a world in arms, madly bent 
upon the overthrow of champions of whom in- 
deed it was not worthy. We are accustomed to 
flatter ourselves, in these days of greater enlight- 
enment and wisdom, that a more correct appre- 
ciation of the great truths of the moral and phys- 
ical world places us at an immeasurable distance 
from the erroneous influences of those ages of 



Public Opinion. 225 

darkness and gloom. Thanks to tlie expanding 
spirit of a progressive civilization, tkis proud boast 
is to a great extent borne out by tke evidence of 
facts. Under tke peculiar and inestimable institu- 
tions of our own favored land, the intellect and 
the heart are, indeed, left free to accomplish their 
highest conceptions v^ithout the most remote ap- 
prehension of physical restraint. But these in- 
stitutions, while they have wisely interposed the 
most efficient checks to the introduction of a per- 
secuting and an intolerant spirit, have, at the 
same time, conferred an overwhelming power 
upon the influence of public opinion. Before 
that power the highest and the lowest are com- 
pelled, by a moral force which it is in vain to 
withstand, to bow with an implicit deference. 
To this mighty power let us then appeal for an- 
other and a powerful sanction to our great sys- 
tem of Universal Education, and, with the contin- 
ued favor and blessing of Di^dne Providence, let 
us trustfully hope for the diffusion of knowledge 
wherever a human being exists to participate in 
its benefits ! 



P2 



CHAPTER XV. 

OBJECTS, MEANS AND ENDS OF EDUCATION. 

IN all our efforts to improve and perfect our 
systems of Public Instruction, it is of para- 
mount importance clearly to understand and con- 
stantly to keep in view the objects, aims and ends 
of Education. These are manifold and various — 
comprehending not only the happiness and well- 
being of individuals, but of communities, states 
and nations— not only the interests of the present 
but of the future — not only the destinies of time, 
but of eternity. 

Education is the formation of character, in all 
its aspects, in all the possibilities of its develop- 
ment and expansion here and hereafter. It is the 
cultivation, training and discipline of every fac- 
ulty of the intellect, and every affection and dis- 
position of the moral and religious nature, for the 
attainment and the fulfillment of the great pur- 
poses for which existence was conferred. 

That culture which regards exclusively or pri- 



Objects, Means and E^tds of Education, 227 

marily the mere attainment of knowledge, to 
whatsoever extent it may be carried, or to what 
soever degree of advancement it may "be enabled 
to arrive, can not be otherwise than essentially 
and fatally defective. And yet it is not to be 
denied that hitherto the conrse of instruction in 
all our systems of Popular Education, public and 
private, has far too generally assumed this direc- 
tion. Hence, while the boundaries of science 
have been almost indefinitely extended in every 
direction, and while knowledge has been almost 
universally diffused throughout every civilized 
community, no corresponding advancement has 
been made in public and private morality and 
virtue. On the other hand, we are assured, upon 
the most unquestionable authority, and there is 
unfortunately but little room to doubt the fact, 
that the increase of vice and crime, and the prev- 
alence of dishonesty and of open and secret fraud 
and corruption, have been more than proportion- 
ate to the increase of population and the ad- 
vancement of our modern civilization. In a com- 
munity like our own, where the great mass of the 
population have enjoyed the advantage of early 
and continued education during the period ordi- 
narily allotted to instruction- — where, too, such 
instruction is entirely free to all, and nearly uni- 



2 28 First Principles of Popular Education, 



versal in fact — where the various sciences and the 
arts, especially those which have any relation to 
the pursuits and wants of practical life, have 
been carried to the highest attainable excellence, 
it might reasonably be expected that the criminal 
calendar, instead of annually increasing, should 
rapidly and steadily be diminished — that a high 
standard, both of public and private morality, 
should prevail, and that the upright, the virtu- 
ous and the good should be effectually secured 
against the depredations of the vicious, and the 
burden of their maintenance and support. If 
this result has not been attained, or is not likely 
to be attained — if the generous and ample ex- 
penditures which have been and continue to be 
lavished upon the education of the youth of our 
land, produce no perceptible amelioration in the 
tone of public or private morals, and diminish in 
no perceptible ratio the expenses of repressing 
and punishing crime, or of supporting the worth- 
less and the dissolute — the inference would seem 
to be a legitimate one, either that the influence 
of education for the improvement and elevation 
of humanity has been overrated, or that it has 
hitherto failed, in a most important and essential 
respect, in availing itself of the proper means 
for the accomplishment of its object. Such a 



Objects, Means and Ends of Education. 229 

conclusion, however, would be premature and fal- 
lacious, unwarranted by the real facts of the case, 
and unsupported by any substantial foundation 
in sound reasoning or argument from those facts. 
The importance of a general and universal dif- 
fusion of useful knowledge among the citizens of a 
free state has not been and can not be overrated. 
Its necessary and inevitable tendency is, and 
must be, under all and any circumstances, to aug- 
ment, in a steadily increasing ratio, all those ele- 
ments of individual and social prosperity and ad- 
vancement which in the aggregate constitute 
national greatness. Nor is it, to any considerable 
extent or degree, from the educated portion of the 
population of any country that the ranks of vice, 
crime and mendicity are recruited. Seldom, in- 
deed, is the public mind startled with the annun- 
ciation of the arrest, trial and conviction of an in- 
telligent and well-educated criminal; and still 
more rare is it to find such an individual depend- 
ent upon public charity for maintenance and sup- 
port. The most scrutinizing and careful exam- 
ination of the records of our criminal courts, 
prisons, penitentiaries and almshouses will be 
found to establish the fact that at least ninety 
out of every hundred on their calendars, and 
probably a much larger proportion of the whole 



230 First Principles of Popular Education. 

number for any given series of years, have never, 
or but very imperfectly, availed themselves of the 
facilities for education v^hich are afforded by 
our common schools, defective and incomplete in 
many respects as have been and still are these 
elementary institutions of learning. Not one in 
two hundred of these convicts, nor one in two 
thousand of the inmates of our almshouses, can 
make the slightest pretensions to what may be 
termed a good education, or a complete and thor- 
ough course of instruction. While, therefore, it 
may be true that the progress of crime and pau- 
perism has increased in a fearful and alarming 
ratio to the increase of population and the prog- 
ress of civilization among us, it is also clearly de- 
monstrable that this increase is due almost exclu- 
sively to the failure to bring within the pale of 
our educational systems that large class of our 
population who stand most in need of its elevat- 
ing and reforming influences. It is not because 
education, in the true sense of the term, is uni- 
versally diffused, but because, practically and in 
point of fact, it is not; because thousands and 
tens of thousands of those for whose intellectual 
and moral culture abundant facilities have been 
provided have refused or omitted to avail them- 
selves of those facilities. 



Objects, Means and Ends of Education, 231 

Still, it is not to be denied that our institu- 
tions of instruction, public and private, our Com- 
mon Schools, Academies, Colleges and Universi- 
ties, are not doing what they might and should 
for the education of those committed to their 
charge. Much, very much, has indeed been ac- 
complished through their agency in extending 
the boundaries of useful and practical knowl- 
edge, and instilling into the minds of the youth 
of our land those principles and imbuing them 
with those habits which, rightly improved and 
steadily adhered to, will seldom fail to guard 
them effectually against the numerous snares and 
pitfalls which await them on every hand in the 
journey of life. That they have not done more 
— that education itself has not assumed the form 
and occupied the position of the first and highest 
of the sciences, and the noblest and most impor- 
tant of the arts — that it has not been made to 
comprehend not only the entire circle of practical 
and attainable knowledge, but to confer in all its 
amplitude and to its fullest extent the power of 
self - culture, self - control, and self- advancement — 
that it has not taken cognizance of all the various 
faculties of our being, and given full and com- 
plete and harmonious development to each in 
accordance with the great purposes of existence 



232 First Principles of Popular Education, 

here and hereafter — that these principles and 
views have not more generally been recognized 
and acted upon, may readily be accounted for, 
though not fully justified, when we consider 
the numerous disadvantages and obstacles with 
which even our best institutions of learning are 
forced to contend. The want of an adequate and 
independent support, of an intimate connection 
and relation with other similar institutions and 
with those of a different grade — the too rigid and 
inflexible adherence to modes of instruction and 
systems of intellectual and moral discipline which 
the advancement of science and the progress of 
modern civilization have rendered inapplicable 
to the existing state of things ; these, combined 
with the restless and uncontrollable desire of the 
ardent and ambitious student to plunge at the 
earliest possible period into the pursuits and to 
grasp the prizes of active life, have exerted a 
powerful influence in restricting and circumscrib- 
ing the legitimate domain of education. 

Without entering at this time upon the dis- 
cussion of the question whether a public or pri- 
vate education is most conducive to the future 
welfare of the pupil, it is unquestionably both 
the interest and the duty of every community to 
provide at the public expense every possible fa- 



Objects^ Means and Ends of Education, 233 

cility for the complete and thorougli education of 
tlie young, and to take tlie most effectual meas- 
ures to bring within the scope of the means thus 
furnished every child not otherwise suitably pro- 
vided for in this respect. Both the public wel- 
fare and the safety and security of individuals 
imperatively demand that none of the members 
of the community should be permitted to grow 
up in ignorance, with its almost invariable at- 
tendants, vice, destitution and crime. It is not 
enough that the doors of our noble and liberally 
distributed temples of knowledge are thrown 
freely and invitingly open to every child — it is 
not enough that the amplest and most lavish 
means are annually appropriated for the exten- 
sion and diffusion of our system of public instruc- 
tion — while at the same time we are compelled 
to contribute still more liberally to the repres- 
sion, the detection and punishment of crime, and 
the support of vagabondism and mendicity. We 
have it in our power to prevent these evils, to a 
very great extent, by cutting off their source — by 
requiring, at the hands of parents, guardians or 
employers of youth, that the children confided to 
their care shall, in some way, be properly and ad- 
equately instructed, and at all events that they 
shall not, under any pretense, be allowed to re- 



234 First Principles of Popular Education, 

main in utter and hopeless ignorance, exposed to 
the nefarious designs of the profligate and un- 
principled, and the numerous temptations inci- 
dent to poverty and want. The community has 
the right, and it is its duty to require that the 
liberal and munificent outlay which it invests in 
the education of its citizens shall not be virtually 
counteracted, or rendered unavailing to the ac- 
complishment of the purposes for which it is de- 
signed, by the culpable and criminal neglect of a 
large portion of its members to avail themselves 
of the facilities thus placed at their disposal. It 
has a right, and it is its duty, to insist that for 
every dollar contributed toward the education of 
the people, at least an equal amount shall be de- 
ducted from the annual assessment for the main- 
tenance and punishment of criminals and the sup- 
port of vagabonds and paupers; and this result 
it can secure only by gathering into the institu- 
tions of learning provided for that purpose all 
those of a suitable age for whose mental and 
moral culture no other adequate provision has 
been made. 

This course is not only dictated by considera- 
tions of interest and of policy, so far as the pub- 
lic are concerned, but it commends itself to our 
adoption as eminently in accordance with the 



Objects^ Means and Ends of Education, 235 

principles of an enlightened Christian philanthro- 
py. The full extent of the wretchedness, destitu- 
tion, ignorance and crime which has been permit- 
ted to accumulate in our great metropolis from 
this single source can not, of course, in the ab- 
sence of the requisite statistical details, be accu- 
rately stated ; but from information derived from 
the most reliable sources, there can exist no rea- 
sonable doubf that at the very least thirty thou- 
sand children are utterly unprovided with the 
means of education, and surrounded by influences 
most unfavorable to honesty and morality. Many 
thousands of these children are virtually home- 
less, houseless, suffering and wretched outcasts of 
humanity — unacquainted with the rudiments of 
knowledge — associating only with the vile, the 
unprincipled and the vicious — familiar only with 
misery, violence, cruelty, hunger and pain — and 
taught and forced to regard all around them as 
their natural enemies, of whom every possible 
advantage is to be taken. They wage an inces 
sant war upon the community, and by their num 
bers, their precocity in vice, their pressing neces 
sities and the utter recklessness of their charac 
ters, speedily render themselves formidable re 
cruits in the ranks of crime. After a longer or 
shorter career of successful depredation, they be 



2 36 First Principles of Popular Education. 



come the inn^ates of our prisons, penitentiaries and 
almshouses, and drag out a miserable and infa- 
mous existence, unenlightened by a single spark 
of intellect and unaccompanied by a solitary 
gleam of Christian virtue or rational happiness. 
How different would be the result if these neg- 
lected children of vice and destitution were ear- 
nestly, systematically and diligently sought out, 
taken by the hand, their wants supplied, their 
education, intellectual and moral, cared for, and 
their associations with infamy and degradation 
cut off at their source ! And how worthy of a 
Christian community like our own, through its 
appropriate municipal organs, and at the common 
charge of all its members, thus to gather within 
the fold of its comprehensive benevolence these 
miserable waifs and strays of humanity — thus ef- 
fectually and permanently to reclaim them from 
the very depths of ignorance and wretchedness, 
train them to habits of usefulness, imbue them 
with principles of goodness and virtue, and con- 
fer upon them all the requisite means and instru- 
mentalities of future well-being, honor and happi- 
ness ! There on the one hand are the thousands 
and tens of thousands of ignorant, suffering, de- 
graded, vicious and homeless children— destined, 
inevitably, in a few years to become the active 



Objects^ Means and Ends of Education, 237 



scourges, tlie irreclaimable pests, and the heavy 
burden of the community ; and here, on the other, 
are our stately, noble, commodious and comforta- 
ble Free Public Schools, provided, prepared and 
furnished at the public expense, open and ready 
for the reception of all, of every grade and every 
rank. Why not, then, in the true spirit of an 
active and enlightened Christian beneficence, " go 
out into the highways and hedges," the by-ways 
and purlieus, the lowest haunts of poverty and 
infamy and vice, and, if necessary, " compel them 
to come in " — not by force, not by pains and pen- 
alties, but by the stronger cords of persevering, 
systematic, well-directed kindness and sympathy, 
put forth not alone by individuals and associa- 
tions and charitable organizations, but by the en- 
tire community in its corporate capacity for its 
own benefit equally with theirs ? 4| 

The liberal and generous policy of the State, 
therefore, in establishing and munificently sup- 
porting schools in every locality, however re- 
stricted or obscure, where children are to be 
found to avail themselves of their advantages, 
and in opening these schools freely and without 
charge to all who may desire to attend upon 
their instructions, has abundantly vindicated it- 
self by the practical results which have followed 



238 First Principles of Popular Education, 

its adoption, even thougli it may not have accom- 
plished all v^liich its advocates expected or de- 
sired, or secured all tlie advantages of whicli it is 
fairly susceptible. It Las conferred the priceless 
blessings of education to a greater or less extent 
upon millions of those who are now or are here- 
after to become citizens of the Republic; and 
among those who have enjoyed and faithfully ira- 
proved these blessings, ninety-nine out of every 
hundred have been and promise to become use- 
ful, intelligent and upright members of society — 
the guardians and supporters of morality and or- 
der, the advancers of civilization and the dispens- 
ers of knowledge and virtue. That ignorance 
and immorality, vice and crime, destitution and 
misery still so extensively prevail, keeping pace 
with the advancement of our population and the 
progress of knowledge, and that education does 
not fully realize all the beneficial results which 
may reasonably be expected from its general dif- 
fusion, may, it is believed, satisfactorily be ac- 
counted for — 

First — By the fact that there are still per- 
mitted to remain and to grow up to maturity in 
our midst a vast number of children and youth 
wholly destitute of instruction or of moral and 



Objects^ Means and Ends of Education, 239 

religious culture, and that tlie character, condition 
and influence of this portion of our population 
are necessarily productive of the most disastrous 
and injurious results — rendering comparatively 
inefficacious, so far at least as the public burdens 
are concerned, the immense outlay annually ex- 
pended for the entire education of the youth of 
the State. 

Second. — By the fact that a large proportion 
of those who are brought to some extent within 
the influences of our public and private schools 
are not permitted to avail themselves of their 
course of instruction and mental and moral dis- 
cipline for a sufficient length of time to enable 
them to derive any permanent and substantial 
advantage. 

Third, — By the fact that in a large class of 
cases the education and discipline of these insti- 
tutions, however excellent and valuable they may 
be in themselves, are counteracted and neutral- 
ized by opposing influences at home and amid the 
scenes and associations of every-day life ; and, 

Fourth, — By the fact that this education and 
discipline, even under the most favorable aus- 



240 First Principles of Popular Education. 



pices, and when it embraces the whole period of 
youth, is frequently and to a great extent defect- 
ive — 

1. In not being sufficiently compreTiensive^ fail- 
ing to embrace in its culture the whole nature of 
the child, physical, intellectual, moral and relig- 
ious, and omitting or neglecting that assiduous, 
careful and conscientious training and discipline 
of the affections and passions upon which so es- 
sential a part of the future character is destined 
inevitably to depend. 

2. In not being sufficiently practical^ expend- 
ing a disproportionate share of its energies in the 
accomplishment of results, which, however valua- 
ble they may be in a purely scientific point of 
view, or however useful and even indispensable 
under special and peculiar circumstances, are of 
little practical value in the ordinary pursuits of 
life, and under the actual circumstances and con- 
dition and with reference to the probable future 
wants of the pupil. 

3. In not providing adequate means and fa- 
cilities for the complete preparation and training 
of teachers of the highest grade of character and 



Objects, Means and Ends of Education, 24 1 



qualifications, and in failing to offer sufficient pe- , 
cuniary inducements to secure permanently the 
services of sucli a class of teachers. 

What are the great paramount evils with 
which society and communities have ever been 
and still are obliged to contend, rendering projD- 
erty and persons alike insecure, and compelling 
the continued maintenance, at an enormous cost, 
of civil and criminal tribunals for the administra- 
tion and enforcement of justice, the support of 
paupers, and the punishment and repression of 
crime ? Are they not, primarily and chiefly, ig- 
norance, and its almost inseparable concomitants, 
poverty, wretchedness and vice ? Who can en- 
tertain a reasonable doubt that if every child, 
whatever may be the circumstances or condition 
of his parent, could be placed at the age of four 
or five years under the charge of fully qualified 
and competent teachers, in institutions specially 
provided for that purjDose by the authority of 
the State, and subjected for a period of ten or 
twelve years to a wise, judicious and enlightened 
culture and discipline of all the physical, intel- 
lectual, moral and religious faculties of his na- 
ture, side by side with all the other children of 
the community, pauperism and immorality and 
vice and crime, in all their innumerable manifes- 

L 



242 First Principles of Popular Education. 

tations, would entirely disappear, or be restricted 
within sncli narrow limits tliat they would no 
longer disturb the peace, or prey as they now do 
upon the vitals of society ? Two conditions only 
are requisite for the full accomplishment of this 
most desirable object : the first, that the process 
of education and instruction should be thorough 
and complete, embracing in their fullest extent 
all the faculties of our being, and harmoniously 
developing and judiciously directing all the va- 
ried powers of our common nature ; and, second- 
ly, that this education and instruction should not 
only be freely offered to every child, but that ef- 
ficient measures should be adopted to ensure its 
reception, either in institutions provided by the 
State, or in such other mode as parents should 
prefer. If our public schools are not sufficiently 
numerous or spacious to afford the requisite ac- 
commodations for this purpose, let them at what- 
ever cost be increased, extended and enlarged. 
If the requisite supply of faithful, competent, 
skillful and successful teachers falls short of the 
demand, let adequate pecuniary and personal in- 
ducements be presented until the deficiency be 
fully met. If false and imperfect ideas of educa- 
tion prevail, if the standard of instruction and of 
moral and intellectual discipline prove inade- 



Objects^ Means and Ends of Education. 243 

quate in any of its departments to the accom- 
plishment of the object in view — the formation 
and development of a noble, manly, generous^ and 
exalted character — let the highest energies of the 
first minds of the community be brought to bear 
upon its improvement and perfection. 

The most accurate and reliable statistics, care- 
fully gathered from the official records of our 
own and other countries, conclusively show that, 
imperfect and defective as our systems of educa- 
tion are and have been — too generally confined in 
their widest scope to the mere communication of 
intellectual instruction, and even that frequently 
in the crudest form and during only a very brief 
and intermitted period of time — they have, never- 
theless, served to draw a clear, distinct and sharp- 
ly-defined line between pauperism and crime on 
the one hand, and uprightness, intelligence, use- 
fulness and an independent competency on the 
other. With very rare exceptions the inmates 
of our almshouses and pauper asylums — institu- 
tions for the support of which we contribute an- 
nually a sum nearly equal to the entire expenses 
of our educationar system -;-are destitute of even 
an ordinary common school education, by far the 
greater portion of them being unable to read 
or write. This immense and burdensome drain 



244 First Principles of Popular Education, 

upon tlie resources of tlie community might, it is 
clear, be dried up. at its fountain by an enlighten- 
ed system of general education, brought home to 
the doors of every child of penury and destitu- 
tion. More than half of the inmates of our pris- 
ons and penitentiaries of every grade are almost 
entirely destitute of the simplest rudiments of 
education ; and of the residue but a very incon- 
siderable proportion have enjoyed the benefits of 
even the lowest common school instruction. The 
closest and most searching analysis of the records 
of crime in our ov^n city and state for the past 
twenty years will disclose the names of but very 
few individuals who have in early youth enjoyed 
the advantages of what, in accordance with the 
highest standard prevailing at the time, may be 
denominated a good education. Of 1122 per- 
sons, being the whole number reported by the 
sheriffs of the different counties of this state as 
under conviction and punishment for crime dur- 
ing the year 1847, 22 had received a " common 
education ; " 10 only, a " tolerably good educa- 
tion," and 6 only were reported as " well educated." 
Of 1345 criminals so returned for the year 1848, 
23 only had a common, 13 a tolerably good, and 
10 only a good education. The whole number of 
persons returned to the office of the Secretary of 



Objects^ Means and Ends of Education. 245 

State as liaviDg been convicted of crime in the 
several counties and cities of the state during a pe- 
riod of nine consecutive years, from 1840 to 1848 
both inclusive, was 27,949 ; of these 1182 were 
returned as having received a " common educa- 
tion," 414 as having a "tolerably good educa- 
tion," and 128 only as " well-educated." Of the 
remaining 26,225, only about one-half were able 
to read and write. The residue were destitute 
of any education whatever. Of the 566 boys in 
the House of Refuge for juvenile delinquents in 
this city, 287 had attended school less than six 
months, and 41 only had attended any public 
school in the city over three years. An examina- 
tion of the Auburn State Prison, made a few 
years since, gave out of 244 prisoners but 39 
who could either read or write, and but 59 who 
could read well. In the Connecticut State Pris- 
on, but about one-half of the convicts, when com- 
mitted, knew how to write. In the Philadelphia 
Penitentiary, out of 217 prisoners received on its 
organization in 1835, 85 only could read or write, 
and most of these could do so only in a very 
imperfect manner. In the criminal statistics of 
France and England it has been customary to 
divide the convicts into four distinct classes as it 
respects their degree of education and instruc- 



246 First Principles of Popular Education, 

tion. 1st, those unable to read and write; 2d, 
those able to read and write imperfectly; 3d 
those able to read and write well ; 4th, those su- 
periorly instructed. In the former country, dur 
ing a period of seven consecutive years, the pro 
portion of those embraced in the fourth class as 
"superiorly educated" was 227 to 9773 in the 
three former classes. In Scotland, where the 
proportional number of well-educated persons is 
much greater than in France, the proportion in 
1836 of the fourth class to the other three was 
188 to 9812, while in England it was only 91 to 
9909. The whole number convicted of crime in 
a single year in England and Wales was 20,984, 
of whom 7033 were unable to read and write, 
10,983 could read and write imperfectly, 2215 
could read and write well, while only* 191 were 
superiorly instructed. In Scotland, out of 2922 
convicts during the same period, but 55 were 
enumerated in the latter class, and 2539 in the 
three former. In the city of Manchester, En- 
gland, the police returns for the first six months 
of the year 1842 show that 8341 persons were 
taken into custody, of whom 4617 could neither 
read nor write, and similar statistics are to be 
found in the police returns of Birmingham and 
Leeds for the same year. The proportion of the 



Objects^ Means and Ends of Education, 247 

wholly uneducated adults in the various pauper 
establishments . of England and America is sub- 
stantially the same as those above enumerated in 
reference to convictions for crime. 

So much for the actual relations which incon- 
trovertible facts, on both sides of the Atlantic, 
have demonstrated to exist between education, 
even in its lowest and most imperfect forms, and 
the annals of crime. These facts establish, on the 
most competent testimony, the conclusion that 
considerably over one-half of the inmates of our 
prisons and penitentiaries are destitute even of 
the simplest rudiments of common school instruc- 
tion, and that of the remaining half a very small 
proportion only have enjoyed the full advan- 
tages of such a system of education as has hither- 
to prevailed. They show, positively and clearly, 
that the ranks of crime and vice are almost ex- 
clusively recruited from the ignorant classes of 
the community ; and that precisely in proportion 
as knowledge is disseminated and education ad- 
vanced,' vice and crime recede. It must be borne 
in mind, in weighing these results, that the high- 
est standard of education prevailing during the 
period to which they refer was far inferior, both 
in quantity and quality, to that which is now 
universally diffused among us, and that . we are 



248 First Principles of Popular Education. 

far — very far — from even attainable perfection in 
this respect. Let us now see what, upon equally 
competent and reliable testimony, we may reason- 
ably hope and expect to accomplish by a faithful 
improvement of the best means of education we 
actually possess. 

Several years since, a circular letter was ad- 
dressed by the Hon. Horace Mann, then Secreta- 
ry of the Massachusetts Board of Education, to 
the most distinguished and experienced educators 
in different sections of the Union, with the view 
of ascertaining their opinions, based upon long 
and careful observation and practical results, on 
"the efficiency, in the formation of social and 
moral character, of a good common school educa- 
tion, conducted on the cardinal principles of the 
New England system ; in other words, how much 
of improvement, in the upright conduct and good 
morals of the community, might be reasonably 
hoped and expected if all our common schools 
were what they should be, what some of them 
now are, and what all of them, by means which 
the public is perfectly able to command, may 
soon be made to become." The specific inquiry, 
the answer to which constituted the object of the 
circular, was then clearly and distinctly present- 
ed : " Under the soundest and most vigorous sys- 



Objects^ Means and E7ids of Educatioji. 249 

tern of education wliicli we now can command, 
wliat proportion or percentage of all the chil- 
dren who are born can be made useful and ex- 
emplary men, honest dealers, conscientious jurors, 
true witnesses, incorruptible voters or magistrates, 
good parents, good neighbors, good members of 
society ? In other words, with our present knowl- 
edge of the art and science of education, and with 
such new fruit of experience as time may be ex- 
pected to bear — what proportion or percentage 
of all the children must be pronounced irreclaim- 
able and irredeemable, notwithstanding the most 
vigorous educational efforts which in the present 
state of society can be put forth in their behalf? 
What proportion or percentage must become 
drunkards, profane swearers, detractors, vaga- 
bonds, rioters, cheats, thieves, aggressors upon 
the rights of property, of person, of reputation, 
or of life ; or, in a single phrase, must be guilty 
of such omissions of right and commission of 
wrong, that it would have been better for the 
community had they never been born ?" "Should 
all of our schools be ke]3t by teachers of high 
intellectual and moral qualifications, and should 
all the children in the community be brought 
within these schools for ten months in a year, 
from the age of four to that of sixteen years; 



250 First Principles of Popular Education, 

then what proportion, what percentage, of such 
children as you have under your care could, in 
your opinion, be so educated and trained that 
their existence, on going out into the world, 
would be a benefit and not a detriment, an honor 
and not a shame, to society V 

To this circular, replies were promptly re- 
ceived from the distinguished educators to whom 
it was addressed, without consultation with each 
other, which, regarded as the deliberate con- 
clusions and earnest convictions of the highest 
minds engaged in the educational field of labor 
of the Union, are entitled to the fullest confi- 
dence and regard. After an experience of more 
than forty years as an instructor of youth of both 
sexes and all ages, the venerable Dr. John Gris- 
com of New Jersey says : " My belief is, that un- 
der the conditions mentioned in the question, not 
more than two per cent, of the first generation 
submitted to the experiment would be irreclaim- 
able nuisances to society, and that ninety-five per 
cent, would be supporters of the moral welfare 
of the community." David P. Page, then Princi- 
pal of the New York State Normal School, after 
an experience of twenty years. as an educator of 
the highest rank, says : " Could I be connected 
with a school furnished with all the appliances 



Objects^ Means a7id Ends of Education. 251 

you name, where all tlie children should be in 
constant attendance upon my instruction for a 
succession of years, where all my fellow-teachers 
should be such as you suppose, and where all the 
favorable influences described in your circular 
should surround me and cheer me, even with my 
moderate abilities as a teacher, I should scarcely 
expect, after the first generation of children sub- 
mitted to the experiment, to fail in a single case 
to secure the result you have named. I should 
not forgive myself, nor think myself longer fit to 
be a teacher, if, with all the aids and influences 
you have supposed, I should fail in one case in a 
hundred to rear up children who, when they 
should become men, would be ' honest dealers, 
conscientious jurors, true witnesses, incorruptible 
voters or magistrates, good parents, good neigh- 
bors, good members of society,' or, as you express 
it in another place, who would be ^ temperate, in- 
dustrious, frugal, conscientious in all their deal- 
ings, prompt to pity and instruct ignorance, in- 
stead of ridiculing it and taking advantage of it, 
public-spirited, philanthropic, and observers of all 
things sacred.'" Solomon Adams, Esq., of Bos- 
ton, after an experience of twenty-four years as a 
teacher, says : " So far as my own experience goes, 
so far as my knowledge of the experience of oth- 



252 First Principles of Popular Education. 

ers extends, so far as the statistics of crime throw 
any light on the subject, I should confidently ex- 
pect that ninety -nine in a liundred, and I think 
even more^ with such means of education as you 
have supposed, and with such divine favor as we 
are authorized to expect, would become good 
members of society, the supporters of order, and 
law, and truth, and justice, and all righteousness." 
The Eev. Jacob Abbott of New York, an experi- 
enced and accomplished educator, says: "If all 
our schools were under the charge of teachers 
possessing what I regard as the right intellectual 
and moral qualifications, and if all the children 
of the community were brought under the influ- 
ence of these schools for ten months in the year, 
I think that the work of training up tlie whole 
community to intelligence and virtue would soon 
be accomplished as completely as any human end 
could be obtained by human means." F. A. 
Adams, Esq., of ISTew Jersey, says: " In the course 
of my experience, for ten years, in teaching be- 
tween three hundred and four hundred children 
— mostly boys — I have been acquainted with not 
more than two pwpils in regard to whom I should 
not feel a cheerful and strong confidence in the 
success of the proposed experiment." E. A. An- 
drews, Esq., of New Britain, Connecticut, after a 



Objects, Means and Ends of Education, 253 

connection of more than fifty years witli the pub- 
lic and private schools of that State as pupil and 
teacher, and an experience of more than twenty 
years in the latter capacity, says: "If, as I fully 
helievej it is in the power of the people in any 
state, by means so simple as your question suj)- 
poses, and so completely in their own power as 
these obviously are, so to change the whole face 
of society in a single generation, that scarcely one 
or two jper cent, of really incorrigible members 
shall be found, it can not be that so great a good 
will continue to be neglected, and the means of 
its attainment unemployed." Eoger S. Howard, 
Esq., of Vermont, after fifteen years' experience as 
a teacher in Newburyport, Massachusetts, bears 
the following direct and explicit testimony to the 
value and efficacy of a good common-school sys- 
tem : " Judging from what I have seen and do 
know, if the conditions you have mentioned were 
strictly complied with; if the attendance of the 
scholar could be as universal, constant and long 
continued as you have stated; if the teachers 
were men of those high intellectual and moral 
qualities, apt to teach and devoted to their work, 
and favored with that blessing which the word 
and providence of God teach us always to expect 
on our honest, earnest, and well-directed efforts in 



2 54 First Principles of Popular Education. 

so good a cause; on these conditions and under 
these circumstances, I do not hesitate to express 
the opinion that the failures need not be — would 
\:i.oi\i^—one ^er centr Miss Catharine A. Beecher, 
after having been engaged directly and personal- 
ly as a teacher about fifteen years in Hartford, 
Connecticut, and Cincinnati, Ohio, with pupils 
from every State in the Union, after premising 
that her " chief hope of success would rest on the 
proper application of those truths and motives 
which distinguish the teachings of Jesus Christ," 
says : " I will now suppose that it could be so ar- 
ranged that in a given place all the children at 
the age of four years shall be placed six hours a 
day, for twelve years, under the care of teachers 
having the same views that I -have, and having 
received that course of training for the office that 
any State in this Union can secure to the teach- 
ers of its children ; let it be so arranged that all 
the children shall remain till sixteen under these 
teachers, and also that they shall spend their lives 
in this city, and I have no hesitation in saying I 
do not believe that one — no^ not a single one — ■ 
would fail of proving a prosperous and respecta- 
ble member of society. Nay, more — I believe 
every one would, at the close of life, find admis- 
sion into the world of endless peace and love. I 



Objects^ Means and Ends of Education, 255 

say tliis solemnly, deliberately, and witli the full 
belief that I am upheld by such imperfect experi- 
mental trials as I have made, or seen made by 
others; but, more than this, that I am sustained 
by the authority of Heaven, w^hich sets forth this 
grand palladium of education, ^ Train up a child 
in the way he should go, and when he is old he 
will not depart from it.' " 

What is the legitimate inference from these 
strong convictions and clear illustrations of the 
most competent judges and most unexceptionable 
witnesses, accompanied as they are by the most 
indubitable and well-attested facts, showing de- 
monstratively the intimate connection which sub- 
sists on the one hand between education and 
virtue, honor and usefulness, and on the other be- 
tween ignorance and vice, crime, destitution and 
pauperism % 

Is it not clearly and unquestionably shown that 
the highest and most direct interest of the whole 
community, and of every individual composing it, 
demands that the education of its youth should 
not only be free and universal, but that no pains 
or expense should be spared to render it thor- 
ough and complete — not in intellectual instruc- 
tion merely — not in the mere communication of 
knowledge or the advancement of science, how- 



256 First Principles of Popular Education, 

ever comprehensive or exalted — but, together 
with this, in that early inclination and that assid- 
uous development, discipline and culture of the 
heart, the affections, the principles, habits and 
conduct of life which Christianity inculcates — 
which a sound and enlightened moral sentiment 
requires — which reason and philosophy alike dic- 
tate — and which every consideration pertaining 
to the welfare and improvement of society and 
the advancement of our common humanity im- 
peratively demands. 




